Children of Two Worlds

by MessengerDrum

A reboot of the 2009 Star Trek crew and their origins. A mysterious and brilliant hidden pre-cog named Noah joins the story to sweep the crew into an adventure they could never dream and Spock into a world he'd have never known. i own nothing but Noah!

PART 1 - INTRODUCTION - "Child of two worlds"

My name is Noah. I am a woman. Young. In a way. I have lived for a long time, but I stopped ageing normally when the dreams began. I am human. Somewhat. Mostly. All the testing at least says so. I am in some ways unlike a human, but that is what I am, I assure you. My last name is Parker, but I never found my last name important until I enrolled in Starfleet. I am a sub-space analyst, designer, surgeon, historical archeologist, neurologist and painter. I've lived for 68 years, but I–as I said–I stopped ageing properly when the dreams began. I was 14 at the time, I estimate now that my body and it's health come out to about 24. About 53 years ago I joined Starfleet. I lived in the dormitories of the University on the San Francisco Academy campus as Commander John Pike's patron, and was then transferred over to his younger brother cadet Christopher when John passed away. By this time I had already obtained my 1st pHd and was ahead of Christopher, but that did not stop him from being an inspiration to me, a father of sorts. Once Pike had obtained his position on the USS Kelvin for his dissertation, I was already an officer myself, and we soon shared the same command decks and rank. When I turned 19 (or as close to 19 as they could've guessed by the way my body was progressing) I had obtained my fifth and final pHd, written my own dissertation, three texts still currently employed on campus, six theses, two novels, and was honored as the "youngest" pHd alumni of the Academy's human attendant history.

But that is my story at the Academy. What I have always been much more interested in is how I got there in the first place. The Pike brothers always used to tell it to me as a fairy-tale beneath the sheets late at night. Icy sweets and cheese puffs staining our fingers and cheeks, a flashlight between "Uncle" John's knees and his brother's rare smile a glow in the rummy light. This "father" and "uncle" would tell me the story as I fought to stay awake with my wide eyes swollen and bright in wonder. I never grieved. For parents. For a past. Even when I had heard the telling of my tale in ways that reminded me of the blank space in my life, my memories. You see, there was nothing before the Academy. I recall a comfort and feeling safe, nothing traumatic. Nothing outstanding. Then suddenly I was a small child learning to speak and read in the clean white lounges and classrooms of the University. I was a girl; running, playing, in the campus gardens with the Pike brothers. On those late nights of stolen treats and stolen mischief, they would tell me of the night I arrived, or was found. The professor of Biophysics, or more specifically his secretary, found a small child wandering the halls of the east library, nameless, parentless, and clueless. I had been stumbling around the data libraries for days in a trance. The Data-Ghost, they later called me, late after I had gone to bed; at glow parties and their post publishing Ritz. Damaging to normal children, one would assume. But I was not normal. I had been left there. A skinny little four year old girl in a skinny little dress and bare feet. Left in a library. The Biophysics secretary had brought me to the on-campus day-care, the hospital, the information complex, but there were no records of me. Not my birth, my name, my picture, my existence. I spent a few months in the Academy hospital as they tested for everything from brain defects to spontaneous memory loss, and post-traumatic stress. Everything checked out quite normal. That was until the nurses began to notice that I was soon independently changing my own IVs, calculating the outcome of my own initial EEG (Natriuretic Peptide) exams, and fixing the retired equipment that was occasionally left in a storage compartment which required an eighteen head numerical partial-anagrammatized sequence to open.

Then come all the pleasant memories of the Academy. The clean white lounge areas, open doors, the kind student instructors teaching me how to speak aloud the words I read. I had an ocean of knowledge at my mercy, a never-ending supply of tutors, mentors, examples. My intellectual playground in which I never had a spare moment to wonder very deeply about my origins. I suppose this is the way it had to be.

When I was fourteen I had barely begun my thesis on the partial phenomenon of interwoven light bridge oras from off-world longitudinal sound patterns and their affect on relative perception when Uncle John had his heart attack. He lay in a partial coma for two and a half days and finally died in the hospice wing next to his sleepless brother. Needless to say, I was devastated. About a week after losing John Pike, the dreams began.

At first they were only dreams. I was disturbed by them, as they were unlike any other dream I had yet experienced. Very lucid and very real. I recorded them, analyzed and rationalized them daily. Once, I woke in a kind of euphoria that found me finally awaking in the kitchens of my dormitory on my hands and knees in the glass shards of a bowl I had unwittingly knocked over in my daze. They progressively grew worse, becoming less and less conceivably relatable to my own life or anxieties. Faces I had never seen before, places and names I had never heard of or even imagined came to me in the night, as welcoming as leaches in my sheets. More real, more puzzling, and more terrifying.

I brought my case to the psychology professor, Forbes. He sent me to the neurology department of the hospice center, and that's where I began my research for answers, and ended with an informal pHd in brain mapping, but no more clue of what was happening to me than anyone else.

When I was 16, the dreams became even more troubling. By this point in time, Christopher was approaching his early middle age,—whilst the biologists at the Academy were little better than overstimulated children of the press as they enthusiastically began to study my growth—I would often wake in my bed experiencing seizure-like fits accompanied by the physical symptoms of hypothermia, though there was no apparent cause to either course of action my body chose to take when confronted with the increasingly vivid illusions. The medicine that was prescribed to me only led to less than ideal side-affects that interfered with my studies, and so I discreetly discontinued their use, despite the advice Chris attempted to offer me. When I was 17 I had nearly mastered the art of lucid dreaming. I had taken up this activity as soon as my experiences had begun to serve me with unscheduled naps in the midst of one of my tutorials or lectures, leaving my students helpless or worse. A kindly meditation expert from Eastern Iran had lent her time for a summer season, and my sleep, for a time, began to proceed controlled and without incident. My internship aboard the USS Feragut was granted to me the day of my 18th birthday, and I was moved up to first officer in less than six months. Those months aboard a Federation ship were the best of my life I could recall. I sat on the bridge with men such as Pike and Forbes by my side, relatively no past to hold me down, and only discovery and adventure to work and look to in my future. In the confines of my cabin I was so much more free than even in my unlimited playground of knowledge on Earth that was my Academy. New worlds, histories, races, rules. The dreams still came and went, but I had mastered them as I had found myself ironically not in a mystery unwound of my small unknown origins on Earth, but in the vastness and lost mysteries of space and all it had to offer. Happy, a woman, a scholar, a human, an explorer. I had found all I ever needed.

Until the Vulcan... I suppose this is where I should begin my story.

PART TWO - The Beginning

I had been summoned back to my Academy campus in San Francisco, Earth, to perform an honorary lecture, unfortunately well within the standards of any fourth year,... when I met him. I had met and or spoken with several Vulcans before, but this particular one had a unique presence for one of this strenuously chasten and passive species, which I later put an interesting adjective to; wild.

I delivered the lecture (a piece on the relations process between the right and left dimensions of the hap-rem's nervous system) of which I was drawing to a close, when Christopher and a Vulcan I did not recognize entered my classroom quietly.

"And so we can now observe the, at least theoretical, euphoria that may be possible to consciously achieve in this convergence with the right dimensionality." I concluded hearing the door of my classroom close sheepishly behind the guests. I turned from the demo panel I had been illustrating the advocation on and faced the door towards ascending back of the room curiously. Noting my friend Pike, I nodded kindly. Looking just to his right, I suddenly took in for the first time his indiscreet Vulcan companion and inadvertently raised an eyebrow. I blinked. Suddenly I realized even from the other side of the lecture hall, the Vulcan had mirrored my reaction as he took in my own image. At this, my other brow joined the first and I forced myself to turn my attention back to the class.

"Thank you ladies and gentlemen, that is all for me, good luck, and it's been a pleasure." I concluded with a slight angled bow to my audience. There was a brief clamor of applause and then a dissolving sea of red as the cadets murmuring and bustling, gathered themselves and filed out the two doors slowly. I leisurely collected my files and papers a knowing eye casting up at my father figure once in a while as he and his companion made their way down the steps, through the tide of cadets towards the rounded lecture floor. I noted that Chris was at ease as he jounced comfortably down the incline. His hands at his sides as opposed to the routinely formal clasped position behind his back, which the Vulcan, I also noted was now exhibiting. I smelled and introduction, and freed my hands in preparation.

"I thought that your shore leave began tomorrow, 08:00, Old man," I said with a smirk as I came round from behind the wide desk to meet the visitors. I had adopted this term of endearment many years earlier and chose to use it now only partially due to the fact that Chris was obviously off duty. Another part of me relished the idea of making a Vulcan uncomfortable. As formidable as the race is, sometimes they can be downright mules when political standings are called into question. Negotiating and reasoning with them was one of my least favorite activities, even with debate and logistics being some of my leading fortes.

I had been correct about Chris's lax attitude. He strode over and clasped me in a snug squeeze as opposed to our usual terse hand shake, a firm clasp of hand to forearm and a furrowed brow to accompany it. Not today. My father even picked me up slightly as his strong arms squeezed some of the air from my lungs and coaxed a smile from my wide mouth.

"Welcome back," I said happily.

"Good to be back," the captain rumbled. I had not seen my father for three months, and we exchanged a few words quickly before Pike suddenly remembered the presence of his companion.

"Oh, Noah, this is commander Spock, alumni, in fact, just the same," Chris stepped back to introduce the Vulcan. I stepped forward, hand outstretched. The Vulcan however, seemed to grow roots and did not return the gesture.

"Ah, Spock, this is my ward, Professor and Officer Noah Pike," Chris put in hurriedly, remembering the Vulcan custom to finish the oral greeting before the physical one. My glance flickered from my guardian back to the Vulcan expectantly. He stepped forward, strikingly taller than I had anticipated, and brought his right hand up next to his head in a configuration which saw his fingers placed in two pairs and a lean thumb stretched out next to them.

"An honor, Professor. I have heard many esteemed reviews of your work," he spoke, meeting my eyes purposefully. No doubt a gesture towards this custom among humans. His lithe gaze suddenly shifted to the beaming capt. Pike.

"and not all of them from sources inclined to exaggeration." he continued. If this Spock had not been a Vulcan I would've nearly taken the momentary shine in his eyes as he glanced at my father, for a look of friendly teasing in his comment.

'Forward for a Vulcan, aren't you?' I thought fleetingly. Suddenly, I noted that the man's hand was still raised in its configuration. I inwardly panicked. This was a custom that I was not familiar with and was unsure as to how to respond. Almost all of my confrontations with Vulcans had commenced over an intercom or after the formalities had all been made. Not knowing the answer was an uncomfortable foreign occasion in my brain, so I searched wildly for what to do next. Then it came to me. There was a race called the S'Onst, also a touch-telepathic species like the Vulcans. I quickly concluded that Vulcan greetings were much the same, and so braced myself for the vigorous mental impact of a telepathic greeting. I cleared my throat and stepped forward, raising my own hand to mirror the tall Vulcan's. Gritting my teeth slightly, I touched my hand to his, hoping that the metal impact would be brief. I blinked. Nothing happened. Commander Spock stood towering over me one menacing brow raised in what I would name as slight confusion, as I held my dwarfed hand against his. In the wake of bracing myself for the impact of dreaded mental exchange, I suddenly found that I was staring. I stepped back briskly with a firm nod of the head to conclude and looked to Chris for help. My father was holding back an amused expression with more effort than was necessary. I glared at him momentarily, almost amused myself at the odd moment before tugging my dark tunic down into place habitually and continuing with the formalities until I could ask my father and his guest if they had yet dined.

"That's just my point, commander;" I intercepted over the dip in his opposing logic, my fingers unconsciously spinning one long soggy chopstick in my abandoned rice noddles.

"the physiological study of the manner in which the perceptions of our senses originate, how impressions from without pass into our nerves, and even how the condition of the latter is thereby altered, can all be examined in many of these neglected localities when the mind is in contact or sync–if you will–with my theory of the fine arts." I finished, finding myself sitting forward uncomfortably in my chair for the countless time that evening in the company of these men. My appetite was both extinguished and forgotten in the presence of such stimulating academic company as a Vulcan scholar.

"I do not disagree with any particular point Ms. Parker, I only question the painter, not the viewers," he continued patiently, hands folded lightly on the table.

"Respectfully, Mr. Spock, you question the purpose. I must inform you that it is not the painter who can determine the answer to this either, for he is also in fact, a viewer." I advocated with a smirk, my head leaning over my bowl and to the side as I formulated my argument excitedly. I was about to win an argument with a Vulcan!

"In just those cases that capture the artist, in which external impressions evoke conceptions which are not in accordance with reality but are, however, particularly instructive for discovering the laws of those very means and hows of which you speak, and processes by which most normal perceptions originate." I finished with a heft of breath. I felt Chris looking at my face with pride in his ageing grey eyes, and I took a satisfied sip from my cold tea. By the time I had overcome my own internal celebration I had not even realized that I had failed to observe the defeat on the face of my adversary. Or did I? I glanced at Spock's face. There was no expression. It was not that I had not expected one, but I may have hoped for a glimmer of disappointment or some such hint of it in this Vulcan of whom I had discovered and confirmed in the past few hours to be contrarily quite expressive for what he was.

I looked again for it, coming out of my internal review and into a long silence at the table. Chris and I looked at each other tightly, appreciating both my victory and the blistering awkwardness of the quiet. But I saw something else in my father's glance which told of a concealed humor beyond that of the silence. I finally brought myself to look from my father, back to my tea, and finally back to my opponent across the small table shielding my expressive eyes which were no doubt filled with guilty delight and triumph with an expectant vernacular patience. The Vulcan however was not hard with defeat or even the routine expressionless creased brow. Commander Spock was staring at the table, somewhere in the space beyond his folded hands and his eyes smiled contentedly. Perplexed, I waited. The content could only be traced in his cold black eyes to be sure, but I was certain that I had not imagined it this time. Unblinking, Spock continued to stare at the table in front of him. I traced his gaze. Soon I was staring at my own hands, unwittingly pinching the firm pads of my own fingertips intermittently. I made myself stop and folded my hands patiently as the Vulcan. Suddenly the commander tilted his head to one side and returned a comment so unorthodox to his first position in the discussion, my eyes widened with the bemusing deep voice.

"You suggest that we must look upon artists as persons whose observation of sensuous impressions are particularly vivid and accurate, and whose memory for these images is particularly true. That which long tradition has handed down to those most gifted in this respect, and that which

they have found by innumerable experiments in the most varied directions, as regards means and methods of representation; these forming a series of important and significant facts, which the physiologist, who has here to learn from the artist, cannot afford to neglect." he finished, meeting my eyes courteously once again in human tradition.

"On a more artistically euphoric scale, yes." I answered, one brow rising once again and mirroring the Vulcan's own seemingly habitual facial tide for the seventh time that day. Again, I felt Pike's eyes on me with that humor I did not share and I smiled stiffly, turning my attention back to the suddenly empty mug at my lips. I was certain now, that my father had told his commander of my interests and habits as a painter myself, and I was not sure what I thought of this, but I would certainly not take the bate.

The remainder of my shore leave was extended (as was everyone's) for the entire semester. I was disappointed for a time, but still happy to be back with my studies and my colleagues, some of which I was almost surprised to find had begun families or preparations for retirement. Occasionally throughout the years as I watched, I could sometimes feel almost alone though I was surrounded by friends, and "family". But always they seemed to dissolve after a time. Drift away with either age or lives of their own pulling them gently away from me and my University. I suppose this is why I held such stock in my friends of literature, in my academics. Shakespeare, the Devarr, Chaucer, Poe, Milton, Aristotle, DaVinci, Coleridge; they could never die, or leave me. Of course, I couldn't ever give back to them either. Without the constant call of challenge and change in the academic utility of space aboard the Feragut, the consistent replacement of fresh new faces and lives to know and teach, the clean cut rules and operations within the parameters of orders and distance, the loneliness grew more fervent in the semester and I found myself at a loss. Ironic, I thought once more. That I should be lonely in the presence of my friends, my element, rather than in the cold confines of space, where I felt so free. But no matter, I understood, and that was enough for me.

My teaching was a pass-time that slowly grew on me once more, and I became more and more comfortable with the sessions as time went by. I jested and employed sarcasm and comedy in my lectures without script, and found a place in the lecture halls again, as I had before my ventures on the Feragut. Spock and Christopher often sat in on my seminars quietly observing my adjustment to shore again, no doubt, I thought. Weeks passed, months, and soon Spock attended on his own. About halfway through the presentation, I would begin to listen for it. There was a release of pressure as the elderly door of the Anthony lecture hall would sigh open as quietly as possible, and a few moments later the Vulcan would be seated airily at the back next to the click of the latch as the door shut politely in his wake. And so he would sit tall and minimally attentive until my concluding words of "ladies and gentlemen that is all for me today, thank you," and he was gone. The door never failed to open and again shut between "ladies" and "thank you" religiously, and he was gone like he had never been present. Only once did the Vulcan stay or speak. It was the week after the first lecture he had attended with Pike, and met me for the first time. I had noticed him come in towards the end of my performance and had simultaneously instantly and inwardly bristled and smirked with malicious triumph at having held such a pristine intelligence long enough for an encore. When I had finished and the students where once again filing out passively, he descended the steps with that wraith-like controlled stride and stood quietly by my desk as if waiting for permission to speak. The commander may as well have been a child, artlessly lurking in the doorway. I laughed outright, picturing this image on the Vulcan who in reality commanded more presence than the entire assembled council in one breath.

"Professor?" his voice had suddenly rumbled in the aftermath of my outburst in the empty hall. Collecting myself with an uncomfortable chuckle, I gathered the rest of my things and snapped my shoulder bag shut.

"Commander, forgive me, it's been a long afternoon," I feigned lightly, making to pass the awkward creature before he could lure me into another debate that I wouldn't refuse. I needed rest. The dreams had been relentless that morning.

"You do not protest the presence of guests during your teachings then Ms. Parker?" he inquired steadily at my back as I ascended the steps. I looked to the doors longingly. Turning, I replied with the last thing I would say to the Vulcan that entire semester.

"Not at all, Mr. Spock,"

Six months later, I had delivered 22 more seminars, all of which Commander Spock attended silent as the dust of the moldings and just as expressionless. I was convinced by this time that he was laughing at me. Just as he had that day. When December finally arrived I was more than ready to join the Feragut crew once again for a four month outing to the Pascal rings on an archeological commission the next morning. After two run-ins with Professor McDonally and Lieutenant Michaels, which resulted in two unscheduled cups of tea, it had taken me a full three hours to cross campus. I arrived at the hospice in plenty of time to review the last additions to the tutorials that were to replace me the next morning when I boarded the ship... when it started.

Suddenly I stood in my room. My room. In the west wing of the dorm suites. I had been standing in medical offices. I had just come from my lecture. I had stopped to chat with Michaels and McDonally. Hadn't I? I stood very still and breathed evenly. I had been reviewing the ... reviewing.

I looked down at my hands which felt heavy and unbalanced. I was holding the tutorials and their appropriate files in my left hand. I blinked. I was holding a heavy phaser. It's individual parts suddenly warming in my palm as I flexed my fingers experimentally. I blinked. I was holding the tutorials. I was standing once again in the medical offices next to the empty surgery wing, just where I had thought I was. But there was no light. It had been, I had no shadow of a doubt in my mind, which was beginning to whirl in a subdued panic, that it had been no later than 18:00 when I had stood there a moment ago. But the windows were dark and the cool white walls and silent glass doors shone a dark sleepy blue of late evening. I swallowed, holding perfectly still. It was happening again.

"Oh god." I breathed, although the sound which was released from my throat was more of a whine or a whimper dampened by an effort to use speech. This had happened the summer before. The dreams creeping up into my conscious mind. The fits I had as a child. The thought of those nightmares, the cold, and the loss of control suddenly gripped me as I fought to stay clam. I stood alone, in the dark in the open office, trembling.

"Help," I whispered uselessly. The tutorials fell to the floor with a sweeping slap that startled me sick. I blinked again then. The heavy fog of unconsciousness teased my eyelids as I fought to come out of that instant my eyes had fleetingly closed. Wide eyed, I turned in the dark and fled. Like a child forcing myself to move through the dark with that burst of terror squeezed out of the last bit of strength in my limbs, out of what I could not see in the dark.

I ran.

I shot through the halls at an awkward stumbling sprint, one hand out in front of me towards the main entrance.

'People, light, help,' I thought desperately. 'that's what I need, I can't stop until I am no longer alone. I can't be alone right now. Alone. Chris, where are you?'

I felt sweat cold on my belly through my tunic and my back ceased with brutal tremors of a chill. The hypothermia.

'No!' I screamed in my mind 'No! Not yet! Not yet! Help! I need help!' my breath came in frenzied bursts as I ran.

"Hel—!" I tried, but my breath was gone before I could form my tongue into an L. Soon I saw the glow of the white lamps in the hospice entrance, the courtyard. My limbs hurt with the forced motion as they steadily grew to feel like stone, my body shutting down. I felt like a cloth being wrung out and I collapsed into the steadily stretching glow of the lamps just outside the wide glass doors. I blinked again. I felt my tiny clumsy body fall in the vastness of all the energy around me and suddenly I was gone, not even staying long enough to hit the floor. Alone in the dark, and I waited. Alone.

PART THREE - The nightmare

I felt air in my lungs that was not mine. I breathed in and out but the cold air did not flow in and out of me, it was simply there; so my questions about that halted with that. There was no wind and no movement in the space around me. Quite suddenly I stood in over a whirring heat. Hot waves of air burst from beneath my feet, behind me in fact, that I could not identify. I squinted in the sunlight. I looked down at my feet, which were bare. I was naked. My scrawny white legs trembling on top of the bare feet. There was metal. I stood on a warm metal platform. Machine. The great beast rumbled angrily beneath me, though I was deaf to the sounds it would've made. I scanned the sky, which was not very far away, my arms wrapped about my torso helplessly. I was high above the an alien ground. Hot red rock and rusty coloured dust as most of the surface surrounded the platform I stood on. I backed away from the edge, falling, scrambling away from the dizzying distance from myself to the ground below. Then voices. Echos really. I looked over my shoulder trying to find them. The voices were sounds though, not words. Murmurs of speech, like speaking underwater, and out of sync with the mouths they came from. I turned to see two men in space-walking attire. One was Asian, young. The other I recognized. His name was Kirk. James T. I had read about his father, George. I blinked in disbelief. The Asian was desperately gripping his comrade's arm and leg, preventing him from falling over the edge of the rounded platform. More mumbling echos as the men moved their mouths. They were shouting in conversation. The mechanics of this metal platform must have been monstrously noisy, and I was momentarily grateful for the strange water in my ears. I blinked.

I stood in a garden of superb alien blossoms. Many were larger than my torso, which was still naked I noted, annoyed. It was early evening, or early morning, I could not tell the sunrise from the sunset of the world, but I was alone. No echos or murmuring. I turned, understanding for the first time, the expanse of the garden. I stood on an incline of a stone walkway bordered by beautiful archways of the same stone. The flower heads all nosed their way into the spaces between the pillars, and beyond these crowded windows, the garden seemed to go on forever. I turned slowly in a half circle, the air was warm and humid, I knew, but I could not feel it on my skin. I looked out into the empty gardens and lifted my naked foot to step down the decline of the pavilion walk. I was stopped. There was a gentle hand placed on my right shoulder. I turned to see where no one had stood before, a woman. She was elderly, but not old. She stood tall, yet still shorter than myself. Dressed in Vulcan garb, she looked at my face, but not in my eyes with a sadness that was overwhelming. Her large brown eyes stared attentive and mournfully until I felt my throat tighten and my nose burn with my own tears and took her hand in both of mine. Suddenly she met my own eyes at last and squeezed my hands briefly holding just the tiny hint of a smile in her dark honeyed gaze. Then I blinked, and she was gone.

I stood in silence again, in darkness. At least I think I was standing. I was cold again with the sudden loss of heat and I did not breathe, yet their was air in my lungs without the flow of expiration or it's partner. So I waited once again in the dark. Alone, save for the dream.

* * *

Christopher Pike held a stern expression as he strode alongside the stretcher that bumped and rolled along the floor of medical. On it lay his ward, Noah Pike sprawled like a toddler in a heavy sleep. Her face was pale and blotchy with internal stress, and her dark hair hung swinging over the sides of the enclosed frame of the mobile bed. A foggy tube taped on her nose and a swaying IV were all that touched her as the nurse moved the vitals recorder steadily above her body. First officer Spock paced along behind his Captain calmly. The Vulcan's steps a great deal fuller and more calculated than the anxious father in front of him. Spock's hand had moved to the metal frame of the stretcher as his stride quickened in sync with Pike. Medical was abuzz with recently awoken staff and the gossip which preluded this late night arrival of professor Noah Pike's incapacitated body.

"Get her to emerge immediately!" roared Pike over the moderate chaos as he forced himself to let go of the speeding stretcher holding his "daughter". Spock stood to the side, his eyes slowly following the path of the professor through the sliding doors into the diagnostics ward. Also seeing this, Captain Pike charged forward yielding the head MD who directed the bedlam.

"Did you hear me? That's an order sir, I want her awake now!" Pike barked down at the man's blue cap.

"I'm sorry sir, we have to run diagnostics and then proceed to an immediate neuro-analysis before we can—," the man was cut off by Christopher's hushed rage.

"If she were able, that girl could not only run her own neuro-analysis, and do her own brain-surgery, but she could tell you a thing or two about your job, boy. But since she can't, I will! Get her into emergency now!"

"I'm sorry sir, I—," the doctor began, and was cut off once more as the Captain snatched the collar of his tunic and ran the both of them into the main desk, spilling the doctor's clipboard and tri-pad onto the floor.

"Listen to me you—," Pike began.

"Christopher,"

Spock had placed one hand on the captain's arched shoulder and now fixed him with a kindly disciplined look.

"There's nothing he can do,"

Pike slowly let go of the medical officer and nodded hypnotically. The doctor retreated through the doors to diagnostics which hissed softly as he passed, leaving Pike and Spock alone in the waiting area.

"We'll get her the care," the Vulcan offered. "Noah's vitals where strong and her nervous system appeared—,"

"You don't know what she goes through when this happens, Spock," Pike interrupted, a hint of guilt in his tone. The captain rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands wearily before heaving a shaky sigh. Spock raised an eyebrow as he joined his companion seated on the long worn couch.

"You confided in me of her condition, in confidence, but is Ms. Noah aware of —," the priority one medical alarm cut off the Vulcan's words and raised both officers to their feet. Before either of them were aware, the two men were hastily, almost at a sprint, making for the diagnostics ward where the alarm had no doubt originated.

* * *

I was strapped tight to an acutely uncomfortable exam table, the sensation of hallucinogenic compounds in my system and the obvious whirr of space craft all around me. I could smell sweat and old water along with the machines and air filtration drafts on my body, which was, to my continued irritation, still naked. I tried to move my limbs, but the restraints were much too fitted and hurt my skin. A light was over my face and I heard water lapping in a paced pattern. A face appeared, heavily tattooed and scarred, the pupils blackening the rest of the eyes and an angry hunger pulsating in them. The figure opened his mouth to speak, but it was the same. The murmurs and echos of murmurs out of sync, lingering disturbingly. There was malice in this voice though. And soon there was pain. Suddenly a pain I had never known before gripped me like hot wires enclosing around every bone in my body. I felt myself convulse and scream, but it was still the dream. I told myself uselessly. It's not real. However, the pain persisted, and I was again one with it in the darkness.

* * *

Spock and Pike burst into the emergency center of diagnostics. The floor was chaos as nurses shouted over each other in the midst of trying to stabilize the seizing woman on the table.

"70 over 43!" a voice shouted above the others. Spock's eyes widened and he glanced at Pike in alarm.

"She's asymptomatic of seizure?"

"Going tacky,"

"We need 50 ccs of Dilaphton here,"

"Adrenalin!"

"Assimilating now,"

"60 over 31!"

Pike stood gasping silently in horror as he watched the pandemonium and the progression of pain in Noah as her upper body convulsed violently, heaving in great waves of internal thrust from her mind. Her tunic and hair were soaked with sweat as she fought in her nightmares relentlessly. Spock looked on the professor with a pressing reverence and calculation. Turning to Pike, he spoke quickly and in a hushed tone he knew would encourage the captain to remain collected.

"Sir, it's obvious her body cannot remain making synchronous accommodations for her mind at this point. I need to know, in your explanation of this condition you told me of, was there anything you may have left out?"

Pike stared intensely at the floor, fighting to think back.

"No, nothing, why is—," he answered. But the Vulcan was already on the move before he heard the second word in Pike's answer. Commander Spock swept over alongside where Noah's body lay fighting, his very stride brushing away those who thought to interfere with his actions. He knelt and placed his fingers between the professor's neck and right shoulder for a moment, and her body fell quiet instantly. The Vulcan rose and looked to the bright vital charts above the bed frame and relaxed, surprising himself. There was a moment of dead silence.

"Stabilizing, sir," the nurse closest to his patient said in some awe after a long moment.

"Partial-comatose state you'll find," Spock put in evenly. "Brought out of it with time and a little oxygen, to make the transition more comfortable, if it is available." he finished, wiping the woman's perspiration left on his fingers on the raw sheets at his side. A few sets of eyes began to fall on captain Pike then, including those of his First Officer. The captain had regained his former command and leveled all the gazes which were fixed on him as he spoke.

"You will accommodate myself and Commander Spock following patient transfer to emergency," he spoke with a slight emphasis on the destination.

"All following treatment will be run passed either myself or the Commander from now on," he continued. Spock cocked his head the side at this. The captain's voice then seemed to soften almost hesitantly.

"This incident will be documented and held in a priority one restrictive confide, and all will report and remain for comment and processing." Pike finished with tired, yet cold eyes which refrained from wandering to his ward on the bed in front of him. The crowd began thinning and reporting to the appropriate stations to carry out the captains orders in the wake of the excitement of the floor.

"Thank you, Spock, for a multitude of things this evening," Pike sighed, visibly both strained and relived. The Vulcan simply nodded and continued to study the charts at the head and foot of the bed. Noah's small form, made even more dwarfed by the towering Vulcan next to her and the rarely sighted sea of dark brown waves of hair plastered in all directions, made Pike catch her even more as the child he had grown with and finally informally raised as his own. Even though she may transcend him in years, knowledge and even maturity by decades, she was still his friend and his little girl. The hospice staff dispersed in efficient time after the transfer to emergency. Pike closed the

door to the patient's room quietly, drew the three curtains and came to sit in the armchair adjacent to his first officer, who also shared the space. Spock eyed his captain knowingly, but not without patience, and Pike felt his stare.

"I know, I know," he began with a tired wave of his hand which rested over the arm of his chair. "I owe you the whole story by now, don't I?" Spock cocked his head to one side easily at this.

"It would seem that way, Chris," The captain closed his eyes, nodding resignedly. "But from what I have gathered, you also owe this much, if not more, to Ms. Parker," Pike started slightly at this. Spock had read her file already.

"Pike," he corrected the Vulcan a little briskly. "Parker was just a word scribbled out on a name tag we found on her when she showed up here 52 years ago. Written in pink crayon. It means nothing."

"Perhaps," the Vulcan concluded attentively. There was a silence, and Pike looked over Noah in the dim light. Her eyelids were pink and her cheeks drawn in with stress, but her face was peaceful as she slept, a sickly pale slowly colouring again as the night dragged on.

"She'll be heartbroken when she finds out the ship leaves dock tomorrow without her," Christopher sighed. Spock maintained his gaze on Noah's vitals and his ears set to the steady sound of her heart beat of which Pike was not able to hear.

"Spock?" Pike broke in.

"Captain?" Spock started. He had missed the man's last words. One brow raised, Pike repeated himself, for his first officer.

"Are you also commissioned for the for the Pascal rings?"

"Ah, no Captain, I'm not," Satisfied, Pike sat back in his chair again, scratching at his chin.

"Then I will need your help Spock." The ears danced slightly as Spock looked up from the charts to his captain.

"This goes further than you or I can imagine, friend. Let alone our girl here," Pike began without waver, but rather a kind of fear which struck the commander as one of deep requisite in Chris's eyes.

"I shall do my best to understand, captain," Pike slipped a small sad smile before proceeding.

And so transpired the truth of Noah Pike between the two figures who sat tensely at her beside long into the hours of the morning, the bedside of one of the most important humans in existence.

PART FOUR - The second beginning

3 MONTHS LATER

"We have received a distress signal from Vulcan," the board director stated heavily. Spock looked up suddenly at those words with something close to alarm ghosting on his face. This was monumentally less than ideal. The Vulcan shifted at his place on the podium where he had begun to testify his case against the cadet Kirk for tampering with the Kobiashi Maruu exam."With our primary fleet engaged in the Lorentian system, I hereby order all cadets to report to hanger one immediately. Dismissed." the large man finished before rising himself from the auditorium panel. Spock stepped from the podium stump hurriedly and proceeded at a carefully constrained slower stride for the auditorium doors, vocalizing a path through the herd of cadets funneling out.

Pike drew himself from his own seat unsettled as he watched Spock make his way from the place, the exact same complications gripping the Vulcan's mind as his own. Not to mention these complications involved now what appeared to be the safety of his home planet. Captain Pike made his own way to hanger one in haste to intercept the Commander before boarding. And he knew very well on which ship they would both be placed.

* * *

Spock had cleared the shuttle and donned his uniform before anyone at the space dock even knew of the Enterprise's destination. Sweeping into the lift, Spock lowered his tri-pad for a moment of impatience as he waited for the lift to ascend to the bridge. The hiss of its arrival he noted had strangely increased his heart rate. The smell of the new equipment and pliant was heavy here especially on the lower decks, and adrenaline filled the bodies which moved rapidly amidst the bridge. The intensely cool light of the officers station was oddly steadying, and Spock took an eased seat as he heard Christopher's voice expectantly from the center of the room.

"Mr. Spock," Pike inquired.

"Captain," Spock returned in an equally leveled tone. "engineering reports ready for launch," he finished with a nod.

"Thank you. Ladies and gentleman, the maiden voyage of our newest flagship deserves more pomp and circumstance than we can afford today. A christening will just have to be our reward for a safe return. Carry on." Pike spoke aloud, braking the thin uncertainty on the bridge flawlessly and taking his seat in the captain's chair. He then tapped the intercom panel agilely to his right.

"All decks, this is Captain Pike, prepare for immediate departure. Helm, thrusters." he concluded indicating the young Asian pilot, officer McKenna's relief. The ship prepared for maximum warp as they separated from the dock and after a moment or two of absent-mindedness on the new helmsman's part and a rectification from Spock involving the initial dampener, the Enterprise was warping its way to assist Vulcan. Pike initiated the ship-wide general mission broadcast through the navigations officer, Chekhov and spun slowly in the Captains chair to face the science center where Spock had already begun a preliminary sensor graph. The two locked eyes for a moment and exchanged the situation and its inevitable problems if they were correct. Fear tinged the captain as he spoke to the first officer in his glance, fear that might have been detectably returned, if the Captain had not been forced to turn his attention elsewhere before long.

There was silence as the deck collectively imagined and prepared for what they would meet when the Enterprise came out of warp at Vulcan. Suddenly shouting and the heavy quickened steps of multiple pairs of boots grew in everyone's ears aboard the bridge. A moment later, the eastern doors hissed open abruptly as three cadets suddenly stormed the area, unauthorized and in pandemonium. Lieutenant Uhura, Medical Officer McCoy and cadet James Kirk, burst in and began creating havoc with their presence.

"Captain Pike sir, there's a problem, we have to stop the ship!" Kirk sputtered frantically. "Kirk! How the hell did you get onboard the Enterprise?" barked the captain, standing at once. "Sir, this man is under the reaction of a sever medical reaction to certain—," "Bones! Bo,–Bones!" "Captain, Mr. Kirk is not cleared to be aboard this ship, furth–," "What's going on?" "Vulcan is not experiencing a natural disaster, it's being attacked by Romulins!" Kirk spat out in haste.

"Romulins," Pike repeated implausabily. There was a brief silence as Pike glanced toward Spock with a tired dread in his eyes, slowly hardening as his gaze drew a line back from the floor at the Vulcan's feet to the offending Kirk in front of him.

"Sir, I've been tracking a parcel Vulcan received three months ago from the federation, classified and military grade. That same anomaly, the lightning storm began when the parcel was dispatched over the Karrby system on its way to Vulcan. The crew of the delivery vessel, that vessel which had formidable and advanced weaponry was never seen or heard from again. You know that sir, I read your report on the event, and your dissertation from the same process nearly over 40 years back. A parcel of the same size and grade—," Kirk was cut off abruptly with Pike's hard tongue.

"Cadet Kirk, I think you've had enough attention for one day. McCoy, take him back to medical, we'll have words later," the captain finished poignantly, turning away as closed as possible. Kirk stepped away from the doctor and continued, with an urgency in his voice that wrapped everyone in the room.

"Sir that same anomaly—," Kirk tried. Spock interrupted tactfully with a suggestion that did not involve taking in the cadet's information. "I can remove the cadet with—," Spock continued until he was once again cut off. "Try it!! This cadet is trying to save the bridge!" Kirk spat.

"By recommending a full stop mid warp, during a rescue mission?" Spock challenged, desperate by this time to get Kirk and his conclusions off the bridge.

"Sir, that same delivery or transport mission was also followed by the anomaly and a Romulin ship was reported in its wake. It's an attack. I believe this parcel to be a massively powerful weapon Starfleet chose to transfer to Vulcan for safe-housing, and this same independent Romulin vessel is looking for it. At 23:00 hours last nigh, there was an attack, 47 Klingon warbirds in the parcel's trajectory path were destroyed too, and it was reported that the Romulins were on one ship, one massive ship. It's an attack!" Kirk persisted.

"Based on what facts?" Spock interjected heatedly. The Vulcan had stood and invaded the cadet's breathing space not long after Kirk's second sentence and now regarded the younger man with a fixed and grim warning in his dark eyes. There was a silence in the cabin that encompassed all. Finally, there was an interruption at the communications center. The sound of a single red icon signifying channel opening within the ship. The attendant, now Lieutenant Uhura, pressed it in wonderingly.

"Captain," she started in slight confusion. "Unknown authorization was bypassed into the transporter room and has shifted to... this location," Uhura trailed off, equitably as perplexed as the rest of the present crew.

"It's—," she began. Suddenly the entire deck shifted in impossible tremors of the space inside the cabin. The atmosphere seemed to reposition itself with a disturbing wave of jarring cold blasts of air (or lack of air). The sounds of the ship, the soft whirr of the engines and the machinery at each station was suddenly drowned in the swirling shift of atoms re-aligning themselves in a space that was not prepared to accommodate them. The bridge crew were heaved from where they sat or stood, momentarily stunned and dizzied with the pressure of whatever was materializing right onto the bridge. The center of the deck was suddenly a fixed point in space that shone like the core of the sun and forced bodies and instruments aside like paper birds in its windstorm, forcing all the witnesses to shield their eyes and faces from light and debris. A high-pitched sigh finally broke the muted silence that held the bridge's atmosphere like a strangling hand, and muddled the churning light of materialization.

A large titanium holding crate, federation issued, stood on the hull floor. All witnesses ears rang like red alarms as crew began to murmur and blink, taking in the phenomenon. Most slowly began peeling themselves off of floor and panel carefully, never taking their eyes from the foreign and menacing container that sat in the center of the room. Spock felt his eyes clear of some reverence, and he stood abruptly, tugging at the base of his tunic and looking to the Captain, who now straightened himself from behind the navigation panel.

"But,—," Uhura started again, breaking the silence mousily.

"Hold your post Lieutenant," Captain Pike offered, motionless. Silence wrapped the bridge once more. Dead silence. Finally Pike glanced across the helm to Spock, who stood just as frozen. The Vulcan's eyes sought Christopher's with what looked like a shine of urgency, a need to move in the alien's stance. Pike simply stared anxiously into the air between himself and the strange hulky box. The thing was little more than completely dressed in locks and reenforced fetters running along the structure like a maze. The height of the container reached mid-section and appeared cubic in circumference. The only alleviation to the limitless skin of hostile metal enclosures was a manual combination lock fitted into the steel on one side, its face lit with the steely blue light of federation issue.

"Mr. Spock," the Captain's voice suddenly cut through the silence. Spock did not move, instead stood staring at the crate with a steady but dignified incertitude.

"Sir,—," Kirk began, but Pike raised one hand, silencing the cadet behind him and any further speakers. After a moment, the first officer finally initiated the unspoken order from his friend. The Vulcan stepped close to the cruel looking parcel crate and placed one careful hand against the large and bright lock. To almost everyone's astonishment, the commander then proceeded to manipulate the dial in a fashion which told that he knew the code to unleash the parcel.

"Sir!" Kirk submitted in alarm followed by a few other discouraged and quieter comments from around the room. A click from the large crate, however brought all these to silence and Spock stepped back as the skin of the box began to shift with a hard release, as the locks fired open one at a time. Suddenly there was an explosive hiss as the thing gave away its obviously airtight internal operatives. A rush of cold vapor leaked from the tops of the sides and Spock took another step back as the walls clamored open on all four sides sighing down to the floor. The contents was shrouded in more of the frigid cloud of vapor.

An even deeper silence descended upon the crew as this vapor cleared. Uhura covered her open mouth in quiet alarm and McCoy's brow creased in disbelief. Naked, and curled within a fitted frame into a small fetal position, lay a girl. A woman, beaded with moisture from the enclosed atmosphere and sickly pale.

"This is your weapon, Jim?" McCoy blurted out after a long moment. Kirk opened his mouth and shut it again.

"No," Pike spoke as loftily as he could in the suffocating stillness.

"This is professor Noah Pike."

No one moved for a long time. The contents of the parcel, placid as ice. Her dark hair lay in a clotted curtain over most her face and sharp shoulders, and the back barely moved with breath. Abruptly, McCoy, medical officer as he was, reached for his scanner stepping round the others and advancing towards his new specimen. Spock and Pike both started at once.

"McCoy!" Pike's eyes widened as he reached for the back of the man's tunic.

"Doctor," Spock intervened, swiftly reaching over and grabbing the man's wrist to prevent him from his examination. Suddenly there was a stifled cry from the still clearing mist below the grappling men. The girl screamed now, from behind clenched teeth. Barely breathing between pitiful calls, the parcel spasmed and lurched like a long limbed toddler. The eyes were shut and the jaw trembled and sputtered in between the outbursts of fright. McCoy retreated at the first movement, both hands raised helplessly in the air. The girl tried to stand several times in one moment, trying to breathe and cry out at the same time and pitched over on her side violently. Spock dove. Slamming down on one knee, the Vulcan snatched the figure lightly out of a grim fall. The girl shuddered violently, still blind and limp, her screams dissolving into a series of feckless whimpers. There was another stifling silence as all watched the twisting face of the naked white figure in Spock's tentative hold; nothing in the Vulcan's eyes, but a slight disdain for the present disorder.

"Sulu, Barry, seal off the bridge and close all communications, save for the priority one. I want all visual monitors of this event blackened and to remain that way until I say otherwise. Hale the transport bay, they are to do the same. Records, included. All black," Pike broke in mercifully. Heaving a steadying breath, he straightened and spoke again in a softer, graver tone. "nothing happened in here ladies and gentlemen. You'll all do well to see to that fact." Pike fixed and held a piercing look over every eye in the room as he finished.

"Mr. Spock, McCoy, sickbay. Have a small medical team on stand-by to receive,"

"Of course, sir," McCoy returned after only half a moments hesitation.

"You all have jobs to do, go see to them," the captain concluded, his eyes dangerously close to heartache as he glanced towards the cold, now empty crate. The first officer rose, and casually jostled his burden to carry more comfortably to sickbay. Lieutenant Uhura had silently retrieved a blanket from the emergency compartment over navigations and offered it solemnly to the Doctor's elbow as he stood, still somewhat aghast. Soon the unlikely professor was wrapped tightly in this and transferred without further words or witnesses to medical.

* * *

I fell in a blotted nightmare. Quite alone and stripped of all reasoning. The dreams became a world, a life that I lived in. And I lived in them alone. I watched others, faces, heard them speak, but never to me. Only once did anyone ever look at me, see me, comfort me. In the beginning, it had been that woman in the garden, the pavilion that collapsed into another vision of pain. I saw engines writhe in polarity burnout and burst into a nothingness surpassed even the nothingness of space. I watched faces, kind and innocent burn red and collapse, frozen from the inside out. I saw Christopher, miserable, immobile in a wheelchair, I felt the magnetic field of an entire planet, an old world, dusted in red, collapse instantly to become one with the horizontal line of synthesized empty space that framed the rest of its solar system, the lines followed like a treasure map. Like a treasure map. Blind, deaf, and hunting.

I dreamed in the dark, wondering if I were dead for an eternity. I was sure that I was mad. Wasn't it already bad enough that I had to die, become a ghost, an obviously active consciousness, did I really have to be insane as well? Alone, the dreams crowded me, in the dream, I wished to be alone. To drift forever, unfeeling, submerged in the dark and forgotten forever. I craved it like water in hell. And then the dark would come and I would be granted it, drowned. Every time.

I drifted, always falling, always alone. A solitary thing, never solid, sifting here and there in a nightmare that had no goal or end.

That is, until I felt sick. I was sick. I felt my body responding to physical pain. My body. My stomach needed to empty its contents. I felt my tongue inside my mouth, I felt the vulgar racket of my involuntary functions. Breathe, a heartbeat. All overwhelming and horrible, a nightmare in itself, but it was home. I was still I. I took the space that was mine, that no other space could occupy until I was dust in time. I was abruptly sick in my mouth, and I felt warmth as I chocked in a blistering protest of one part of my body to another. I breathed painfully sweet air, too sweet, and experimented with movement touching, what I hoped were the pads of my own fingers, I pinced and massaged around with my digits enthusiastically. I felt cold and wet all over. Inside and out. Suddenly I panicked, as my brain, kindly so, slowly, informed me that I was blind. My throat constricted with a dry heave once more as I tried again to speak or sound of my dismay. I almost delighted in the pain, though I potently told myself that it was the worst pain I had ever experienced. I felt very small. This I must next I should clarify by differentiating this kind of small from the small that one can experience in the dream and euphoria of unconsciousness. On one level, I felt small and insignificant in the dream, but simultaneously immense without the restriction of a body. I believe the term was an "out of body consciousness". The small I now felt was wonderfully structured and felt like home. It was home. I was me. Sort of.

With this comfort, I allowed myself to drift in and out of sleep as my mind felt over, wandering, crawling like a fascinated child over a map, the rediscovering reality in its solid truth. A luxury, I thought I would never feel again. Marvelously relieved, I lost all concern for whatever my present physical state was in, and slept in what I suspected was not entirely a naturally induced sleep, but one I somehow knew I would wake from. Pain, cold, light, sound, muffled, horrible and overwhelming enemies, where still companions. I was I, and not alone anymore. And so I welcomed them with all my heart that sounded in my head like a racing horse.

* * *

Doctor McCoy administered a humbled sedative into the professor's arm carefully, the questions burning up in his head like a fever. Which reminded him, he should also continue scanning for.

He had certainly heard of Noah Pike, the revered phenomenon and genius of the mid-west Academy, many times he had considered attending a lecture. It was strange to finally meet the professor under such circumstances, stranger still to find out that Noah Pike was in fact a woman, and in addition, no older than their own Lieutenant Uhura. Last he had heard, the prodigy was vacationing someplace where writing a book or two might be ideal, but that was far from where anyone there were headed. The bastard first officer stood by the door watching McCoy carry out his work like a hawk. McCoy bristled as Chapel handed him another hot packet to bundle against the professor's torso. There was an important life in his hands, he had no way of knowing how to proceed, and this alien perfectionist was watching over his shoulder like his own mother. A thought occurred to the doctor.

"You seem to have some idea of what all this fuss is about, Commander, care to help a medical officer out?" he huffed, not bothering to look over his shoulder.

"You are managing the situation in a satisfactory fashion, doctor, there is no need for my assistance unless you require it. And as you mentioned, you are the chief medical rank in this room, not—,"

"A green-blooded—," McCoy began to cut him off hotly just as the door slid open admitting their Captain.

"Captain," Spock began.

"How is she?" Pike discontinued the formality as he made his way over to the bed. Still unconscious, Noah trembled and mumbled contentedly in light sleep, her eyes all but glued shut, lips white and cracked.

"Stabilizing. She's sedated right now, neuro-readings all indicated massive activity until a few minutes ago when she seemed to calm down after the scanners showed her finally breaking from a REM sleep into a slower paced one. She stayed in shock a little too long though, so I can't say how she'll be when she wakes up."

"And when will that be?" Pike pressed calmly.

"Probably just a few hours, and her nervous system seems to be back online alright,"

"And this how she will be when she wakes up business?"

"Well, I'm a little worried about her vision. Human transport is pretty high-risk when it comes to re-assimilation, which is why I'm guessing it's still outlawed," the doctor eyed the inconspicuous Vulcan suspiciously with one bald look. Pike noted this and a filmy warning passed over his face translating into McCoy as tidings to back down. The doctor scarcely nodded in an almost undetectable remorse and continued without missing a beat.

"She may have some retinal failure due to poor nutrition in that thing, and memory loss if she doesn't stay out of that comatose state before I can get her to fully stabilize again, sir,"

"And how will you go about making sure of that,"

"The only thing to do is keep her slightly sedated until her body recovers enough to wake fully and independently. If she can do that, then she's more than likely to have retained all of her former self." McCoy finished with a note of confidence in his voice. There was a silence.

"Just a few hours, sir. Everything says she'll get there,"

The Captain slowly nodded.

"Mr. Spock, you're needed on the bridge," Pike said, turning to the statuesque figure by the door. The Vulcan seemed to understand right away, the utterly undetectable sudden requisite in the man's statement, and spun on his heal to relieve the Captain.

Christopher approached the enclosed mattress. Noah's fingers tapped, stretched, and pressed into each other in an infantile fashion at her sides as she slept. It had been three months, and she was still just as far from him.

"I thought I could keep her safe on Vulcan," Pike murmured, the blemished tint of shame in his hushed words.

"Sir?" McCoy explored.

"You're correct. She'll have no trouble coming back in a while."

"Is there more about this you need to tell me, Captain?" although this sounded like a question. McCoy was a doctor, and no fool. There was already an acknowledged tone in his voice that spoke of what he already knew, or guessed at.

"Yes. Sit down, McCoy."

* * *

THREE HOURS LATER

"Nwaaa...," I mouthed, breathing in the sterile smell of hospice and tasting old breath in my mouth. I blinked, I think. I couldn't see. Wait... shadows. I could see shapes. Dark blots against lighter ones, no colour, no sounds, just shadows of things. Wait. There was one salient sound. Ah, my heart monitor. I felt around for my internal clock. The Feragut!!

"No!" I sat up fast in the mixture of shadows. "Chris! The Feragut! I can't–....,"

"The Captain will return momentarily, Ms. Parker," it was Spock's voice. I jumped a little at its distorted proximity in the room. Panting, head splitting, I propped myself up onto the heels of my hands, my back sticking to the sheets in my hospice smock. I brought my hands up to my forehead to try and dispel the pulsing ache behind my face and ears as I fought to stay sitting.

"No,.. I can't.... what time is it? I'm fine, I have to report to the hanger,"

"The Feragut has left, Noah. Two days ago," he interrupted again.

"No," I felt myself begin, no even bothering with the "o". Another set of beeping joined those of my heart and I caught my breath just as the world went black again.

*

"Well that didn't seem like it went very well," Pike sighed, reiterating Noah's brief wakeful installment as he stepped smoothly into the room just as his ward fell once again onto her bed. Spock stood warily.

"Sir, if I may interject my singular medical advice—," he began

"No, you may not," McCoy cut in as he entered just behind the Captain. One dry partial scowl later, the Vulcan took his seat again. The doctor administered another narcotic after a careful look at the professor's charts and rubbed his forehead.

"I'm sorry, sir, she'll be partially under for another few hours. I can't trust her wakeful stability until I can trust this one."

"Is there any way she might be one her feet by the morning?" Pike mumbled into his chest as he looked down on the bed.

"It's possible, but unlikely she'll have the energy, she'll most likely want to sleep when she wakes," the doctor studied Pike momentarily. "Sir, I suggest that you get some rest as well. After all, I expect she'll need you in the morning," Pike didn't move, letting only his fatigue show through his eyes.

"Captain, I am available to volunteer my evening," Spock stood sedately, hands folded behind his back.

"Him?" McCoy loosed. There was a brief silence as Christopher considered invisibly.

"Thank you Commander, that would be more than sufficient," Pike answered, standing again, stiffly. McCoy pursed his lips discontentedly and followed his Captain out very silently.

Spock took his post again in the chair on the far side of the bed as the glass hissed shut.

FIVE HOURS LATER

"Commander?"

Spock started slightly and blinked. I was awake, sitting on the side of the bed, with one hand on his arm quizzically.

"Professor, how are you feeling?" Spock began, straitening.

"Hah, yes, well, I'm better."

"You still grieve for the left mission,"

"Mm, well, one of the many hazards of the job. Besides, if I really wanted, I could leave with another ship sometime in the next few months I suppose,"

"Suppose,"

Spock had a hesitation in his voice. Another piece of human vocabulary that would never make its illogical way into Vulcan archives, I assumed, searching for a way to explain in my sore head.

"Yes,.... ah, it's a human estimation, in the strictest sense," I answered patiently.

"I am aware of the word's meaning, and it's human connotations," there was a silence for a time while I tried to find other things to look at in the small room.

"However...," the Commander seemed to carry on. "You may be interested to know that you are presently astride The Starship, Enterprise, on course to Vulcan,"

"What?!" I jumped to my feet, nearly losing my balance twice as I stumbled for the door. No sooner than my hands were on the glass, that there was a violent lurch under our feet, and both the Commander and myself were thrown to the floor. There was a faint red glow from the hall just outside, and the both of us on the floor were suddenly in a full sprint for the bridge. Others ran in the halls on each deck, and I believe Spock was made suddenly aware of the small accompaniment at his side one moment before turning a main corridor and into a flurry of security. Spock careened around his side and held me out of the way against the wall, as the clamor passed us. A few more seconds passed and Spock tossed me into the lift and spun inside on his heel as I fashioned the thing to the bridge. The doors opened just as there arrived another paralyzing shake to the hull.

"Emergency evasive!" my father was shouting out over the din of engagement. The blast of another impact abruptly, found me thrown into the base backing of the captain's chair. The viewing screen was throng with debris and fire back-wash. I fought to raise myself up in the commotion, all my long training flushing into my skin. The adrenaline washed away all the hours of lax nerves and thoughts in just a few intense seconds as I lifted myself determinedly onto the right arm of that chair, and I saw for the first time, the Romulin ship. I stared openly, long strands of damp hair loosed to my elbows, eyes almost burning with the bright lights of the deck, and a medical smock and trousers barely holding onto my hips and shoulders, I felt an apprehension that I had never imagined in my wildest dreams. Like I had been struck with a paralyzing deja-vu, I stared into the drifting rubble and onto the massive vessel with a fascination that momentarily repressed even my steadiest thoughts.

"Get me Starfleet Command!" Pike ordered.

"Captain! The Romulin ship has lowered some kind of high energy pulse device into the Vulcan atmosphere. It's signal seems to be blocking our communications and transporter abilities," Spock had found his way to his station and turned, delivering his status report, which was all, no doubt, of this bad news.

"Engineering, status report!" I belted across to the engineering station, making my way over to the sensor scanners on questionable legs.

"Deflector shields are holding!"

Pike was aware of me now, and gave me a warning glance that spoke of more worry than sternness. I ignored this, it was not the time. I was capable, and I was present.

"Full reverse, come about, starboard, 90%, drop us down underneath them, Sulu!" I continued unfaltering. Suddenly there it was in full view now. A ship familiar and terrifying. The Romulin titan sprang into view silencing almost everything on deck.

"Captain, they're locking torpedoes," Spock offered calmly from behind us.

"Convert auxiliary power!" I returned.

"Report the cells to forward shields!" Pike finished. There was another unsettling tremor and barrage of sound. I gripped the railing hard and knelt for the duration.

"Shields at 32%," Sulu reported quickly in its wake.

I absorbed the vision of the Romulin transport beyond the screen, and turned instinctually to consider the faces of the other witnesses. Spock was as wide-eyed as a Vulcan gets. My gaze shifted to the receiving area of communications. There was a singular short-ranged beacon blinking steadily. I shifted over to the board and clicked the beacon inward, listening.

"Captain," I began formally, ergo, Chris should know of the importance in my next words.

"We're being haled,"

There was more silence as the Romulin face appeared on the screen slowly.

"Hello,"

"I'm Captain Christopher Pike, to whom am I speaking?"

"Hi Christopher, I'm Nero,"

At this insolence, I first turned to my father, then behind me at the bristling Vulcan. It was comforting to know that even he had found this offensive.

"You've declared was against the Federation, withdraw, I'll agree to arrange a conference with Romulin leadership at a neutral location,"

"I do not speak for the empire. We stand apart. As does your little orphan crew member, isn't that right, Pike?" the tattooed face sneered. Thoroughly rattled, I swallowed and stood, burying my fears instantly and placing one arm on my father's bristling shoulder as I moved forward to address the face on the screen.

"I do not believe that you and I are acquainted," I spoke evenly.

"Not yet," there was another brief silence.

"Captain Pike, your transporter has been disabled. And as you can see by the rest of your armada, you have no choice. You will man a shuttle, come aboard the Neurata for negotiations. You have 12 hours. That is all," and the screen went black.

I watched, fixed on my father as he studied the air between himself and the blank screen. Finally, he turned slowly, a destination in his eyes.

"He'll kill you, you know that," Kirk put in, shamelessly.

"Your survival is unlikely," Spock confederated. I glanced at the first officer with my surprise at his brazen correspondence in opinion with the cadet, my gaze only met quickly with one matched in silent defense.

"Captain, we gain nothing by diplomacy. Going over to that ship is a mistake,"

"I too agree, you should re-think your strategy," the cadet and first officer continued.

"I understand that," Pike stepped in, ending further discussion. My father stole one screening look at me before he turned again and spoke clearly through the uncertainly blanketing us all.

"I need officers who have had training in advanced hand-to-hand combat,"

"I have training, sir," Sulu put in solidly, one hand raised.

"Come with me. Kirk you too, you're not supposed to be here anyway," the Captain concluded as the command party left the bridge.

"Chekhov, you have the conn,"

* * *

PART FIVE - Decisions

"We all have our part to play," I interjected carefully. My hands folded lightly on the small conference room table as I defended my status as a landing party member.

"For the time being, we can't wave the Vulcan counsel to simply ask them why there was an unscheduled transfer, so I say logic dictates we play out Nero's game of cat and mouse until we know what he wants with me. This is obviously an independent enterpri—,"

"There is no way that my daughter is going to be offering herself up as bait," Pike cut in sharply, his eyes lasered onto me.

McCoy, Sulu, and Kirk all shifted in their seats.

"I am not your daughter right now, Chris. I am an officer, and I am already involved whether I want to be or not. We all heard this Nero character," I began again.

"But there's got to be another way of communicating with—,"

"There is," I cut in, standing this time, preventing McCoy from beginning on another one of his personal interpolations.

"Captain," I gestured for my father to take the stand with the understanding of our collective idea in my eyes. Slowly, this idea transferred to Pike and he began. Reluctance giving way to inevitability. The others followed suit, standing, and the command party began to travel, trailing behind the captain as he spoke.

"Without transporters, we can't beam off the ship, we can't assist Vulcan, we can't do our job. Mr. Kirk, Mr. Sulu, Professor Noah, will space jump from the shuttle, you will land on that machine they've lowered into the atmosphere that's scrambling our gear, you'll get inside, you'll disable it, then you'll beam back to the ship. Noah, I'm leaving you in command of the Enterprise. Once we have transport capability and communications back up, you'll contact Starfleet and report what the hell is going on here. And if all else fails, fall back and rendevous with the fleet in the Lorentian system. Spock, I'm promoting you to first officer,"

"What?" I started.

"Captain?" Spock began, with just as much surprise. "Please, I apologize, the complexities of human pranks escape me,"

"It's not a prank, Spock. And I'm not the Captain, she is." Chris finished, gesturing towards myself, the girl in hospice pajamas. I involuntarily straightened as Christopher stepped from the lift and placed both large hands on my shoulders.

"Wait four hours, then when you hear from me, make your way with the landing party to that platform. You'll have one shot, make it count," he leaned in and kissed my cheek quickly, greying stubble scratching my cheek, a smell of home lingering.

"Oh, and take care of my boys, won't you?" the Captain finished with a smirk, stepping into the lift once more. I smiled, inwardly reeling at the far more wildly daunting thoughts passing through my mind.

"Sir, after we knock out that drill, what happens to you?" Kirk asked quickly. I was suddenly grateful for his forwardness.

"Well, I guess you'll have to come and get me," and the doors closed. I looked hard at Spock a moment, now my official first officer, and turned to make my way back to the bridge, and feeling him close behind me as I walked, calculating my remaining time frame, I tried ardently not to think about what my father may well soon be facing.

It was easier to tell myself that I was just imagining the heat on my back as Spock's Vulcan body temperature increased steadily while making our way to the bridge. Shaking my head to clear it, I stepped quickly into the lift once more. Behind my ribs, my heart dropped and I felt my head swell as the world seemed to sway in my eyes. Keeping my gaze on the bottom of the doors, I carefully felt for the railing, trying only to move my wrist.

"Professor, another stimulant would be beneficial," Spock threw in cautiously.

"Also, contrarily, uncooperative with the state in which I should be holding for the next few hours," I retorted, becoming increasingly angry with my physical damage.

"Captain—,"

"It's Noah out here Spock. There's nothing for it," some of the anger was now detectable in my voice as I fought to overcome my frustrations with blasted formalities. I had an immediate grudge with this particular facet of StarCommand, and there was very little I could do about it.

The lift had stopped. Spock's hand dropped from the switch and I became aware that he had stopped our ascension. I charged my first officer with a stern questioning look. He returned with that painfully cool stock of calm.

"You are not well, Captain," was his steady response.

"I'm well enough to carry out my orders, if you will permit me Mr. Spock," There was a short silence, the pulse of the holding lift hydraulics sifting in and out of the murmur of engines far below us.

"It would not be out of line for me to point out the risk in the ship's captain's performing duties to be likely beyond her present physical capabilities," Spock began with a slight incline in his torso as he gestured to me. The glass of frustration behind my eyes began to fizzle with heat.

"No, Commander, it is not. Frankly, it is entirely within your awarded right to see that I never make it to the deck on account of the fact that I have been through emotional and physical trauma. But might I also interject some evidence which also indiscreetly validates my variability to carry out this mission? ...The last thing I remember and trust happen to be events that took place three months ago at the University in San Francisco. From what I have gathered, I was packed up and carted away under areas of Starfleet law that were presented in my education as grey to say the least, by people I have trusted with my life since childhood, and for reasons that have yet to become entirely clear to me. I woke on a starship, light-years away from my home planet in a physiologically critical condition which nearly left me blind, and was then promptly forced to confront a war-criminal capable of God only knows what at this point. Considering the circumstances, I believe I'm doing very well," I punched the button which brought us the rest of the way to the bridge. "and if it's what you need to hear, I will endeavor to keep doing well under the rickety few answers I've been afforded since waking up in this damned hell-hole dump of a situation." I finished, out of breath, but confident enough to finally meet the Vulcan's eyes since entering the lift. Another long pause brought my eyes away again.

"Fascinating," he said simply. The doors opened and I passed out of the enclosure at a quick stride for the helm.

"Helmsman, assimilate our orbit into the magnetic field adjacent to the vertical tide of the planet. It should keep the Romulins from reading any of our short-range trajectory plans," I spoke a bit forcefully, still shaking the momentary loss of command in the elevator from my skin. Sulu started, a bit stunned.

"Um, I've, ... I'm not sure I can,...,"

"One moment, Sulu," I remitted a little in my voice, turning to Spock again.

"Mr. Spock, your tri-pad, please," I took the thing and its pin, carefully drawing up my mind's sketch as I turned back to the helm and stepped down lazily.

"There," I finished my calculation and handed the bulky tri-pad to Sulu, who sat a bit stupefied but assiduous in his patchwork. "That's the formula. Should keep us cloaked for the better part of this shindig. I'm for my quarters to prep, Mr. Spock, you have the conn," I concluded, feeling dark, bearing Vulcan eyes on my back as I spun and exited the deck.

I shivered with the quiet hiss of my door closing behind me. I should've been checking in with McCoy, but there was nothing to report, and I was more than certain that he had his hands full.

"Lights," I ordered. A soft yellow glow bathed the room and I stripped the hospice garments off not without enthusiasm. I tossed the sterile smelling fabric down the laundry chute with vitality and washed thoroughly without humming against the noise of the falling water. A few minutes later I sat on the edge of the neatly made bed in my trousers, boots, and shirt, fastening my customary lengthy braid at the back of my head. As these quarters were not mine, but Christopher's, the trousers were a tad more than roomy, the boots borrowed from another Lieutenant, and one of Chris's undershirts served as my tunic. Still, anything was better than hospice smocks, indecently backless, and relentlessly itchy.

"Bridge to Captain," I jumped as the intercom sounded. It was Spock's voice. I walked quickly to the desk.

"Captain here," I answered, the title strange between my lips.

"You're being requested on the bridge, Captain,"

"By whom?"

But I already knew who had made this request. If it had come from one of my officers, Spock would've stated this, and requested my presence in a different manner entirely.

"The adjacent Captain," Spock replied, almost in jest. He knew that I knew.

"On my way, Pike out," I knuckled the intercom grudgingly as I moved around the desk to the door. If it was a game of cat and mouse they wanted, they weren't playing at it all that well. There was something else at work here. It felt good to walk through the halls in heavy boots once again. Officers and cadets stopped and shouldered the walls respectfully as I passed through the halls, which were, I noticed, on yellow alert. A small warmth of gratitude smiled inside me. It was good to know that maybe Spock was a better soldier than I had initially given him credit for. I arrived on the bridge to a scene of well subdued panic. Silence wrapped the crew and there was virtually no movement on or off the deck. I sniffed matter-of-factly and looked to the screen. The Romulin known as Nero sat boldly close to the display, a terrible sneer, not absurd, smeared across his mouth. Spock, Sulu, and Uhura all stood at their posts ready for activity. I walked casually to the center of the room and waited for the one who held the cards to speak. But there were not words, instead, Nero began to laugh. A hearty chuckle that clutched the back of my knees painfully.

"This is too easy. The pre-cog is your Captain now? Hahahahaha!" Spock's eyes narrowed. I stood squarely, legs apart, facing my enemy with all the fear I held in my bones turned to spite with the willed alchemy I pedaled in my soul. A power only my sense of self, of my order, of all my moral compass could front in me, all my power as a member of the human race.

"Since you have deprived the Enterprise of Captain Pike, it should come as no surprise that the next best qualified officer in line should hold command until Pike is returned, do not you agree?" I forestalled, praying that Spock was taking some sensor readings.

"You really don't know, do you little girl?" Nero's voice was poisonous with hidden gusto. I swallowed.

"You requested my presence Nero, I am present. What is your dilemma? As I understand it, there were to be no negotiations for another three hours when Pike arrives onboard the Nuerada,"

"I just couldn't wait to see it, Captain,"

"See what, exactly?"

"You,"

"Clarify," I barked. I dared not look round the deck at the others faces. The sickly shape sagged again into another laugh of disgust.

"Do you know why you were transferred to Vulcan military safe-housing, my dear?"

"You have made it clear that you believe you know of this. Why don't you explain." I huffed, beginning to lose some patience for this game.

"As a matter of fact... did you even know it was being done?"

"If you have no further—," I began.

"While you sat in the dark, wondering if you were even alive.... did you know that your own Christopher was responsible for putting you there?"

"That's enough,"

"Alone? With the darkness? Who do you talk to? Who listens? Not Christopher...,"

"Enough, Nero,"

"Shut in a cage like a weapon. A tool. Without your consent or knowledge. An animal—,"

I ground my thumb firmly into the connection link, blackening the screen. I felt all eyes shift onto me. I wanted to scream as I stood fixed to my spot on the floor. These were just the questions I had worked so hard to keep away for a better time, a safer time. A time when I was just a professor, and Chris was just my father. I needed air. Spinning on my heel and locking my mouth in a firm line, I strode heavily from the central platform.

"Helm, our trajectory?" I asked quietly.

"Still holding and cloaked," Sulu answered timely.

"Engineering," my voice had dropped once more to a softer command.

"All reports coming in are steady, Pike should still make the ETA,"

"Thank you Olsen. ... Lieutenant Uhura, please maintain that channel's status until rendevous,"

"Yes, Captain,"

With that, most went back to their duties, a decent thrum of voices and monitors chorusing throughout the room again. I had barely reached the exit before I realized that Spock stood beside me. Towering, he looked down on the top of my head with something of what I gathered to be respect in his eyes. It was difficult to determine whether or not to acknowledge this small regard, and I was, in all respects, far too stretched and tired to much care. I glanced up at the Vulcan's angular face and afforded his looming figure one quick pat on the arm as I passed into the hall. I was satisfied with that, and headed back for my quarters, Nero's words still much louder behind my eyes than I'd have liked.

Not too much later I was back on the bridge. I swept onto the deck buckling a phaser belt and communicator to my hips. Spock stood from the observations panel.

"Pike had ordered a four hour delay, did he not?"

I glanced back at the officer as I made my way for the helm's intercom.

"A four hour delay is a three hour one with my father and I. He knows that. We should've heard from him by now. Something is wrong," I held the intercom open. "Attention landing party, this is the Captain, I'm initiating our commission orders immediately. Report to hanger one," Sulu was already on his feet and heading for the doors as I closed the channel again. I checked the heavy phaser at my belt once more and turned towards the lift to join my helmsman.

"Spock, you have the conn. Hold this position until you hear from either myself or Pike. If you hear from me first, don't delay, you beam Pike back to the Enterprise before anything else is done. Yes?" there was a moment's hesitation before the officer glanced at the floor with a nodding blink. And with that, the doors closed before our eyes met again.

The hanger was amass with engineers unexpectedly moved from their posts and cacophonic hydraulics easing into the launch floor. The hot winds of pre-launch heated our already hot-blooded faces as the three members of the landing party climbed quickly into the shuttle. It was only three or four minutes before pre-jump was engaged. Sulu, Kirk and I donned our helmets as the Pilot read off the co-ordinates. Suddenly, the preliminary drop was counted down and I felt gravity slowly leaking out of my perception as we were held suspended over the doors a few thousand miles above Vulcan.

"Good luck," the pilot murmured plainly, and a moment later I was falling like a single rain drop into the Vulcan atmosphere. My limbs wanted to fly every which way and spin with the easing intensity of the transition from space to the dense ambience below. I fought hard to keep straight, dropping like a lead bullet. I closed my eyes and reached for my intercom.

"How we doing, Olsen?" I called.

"32 thousand meters!" the engineer answered. That was fine, I could calculate where to release my chute from that.

"Kirk, Sulu! Pull your chutes when we reach 5 thousand meters from the platform!" I shouted to the other two lead droplets falling behind me.

I waited like a tightly wound spring, eyes squeezed shut and almost holding my breath. I had only done this once before and I had not enjoyed it. When the colonized screen showed me a falling count from 6 thousand meters, I punched the release on my suit with a painful release of air from my lungs and I was swept out of gravity in an instant that made me wonder if my neck had snapped. Gulping air like water, I glided in the heavy Vulcan sun and saw the platform steadily for the first time. My legs swung shaking as I descended slowly towards the machine beneath me. The landing was much faster than I had anticipated and I rolled from heels to knees, before being tossed over onto my shoulder. I was fortunately fast enough finding my way back to the release button before I could be snagged on anything menacing. I threw my helmet down and chocked for a moment as I swallowed a gulp of hot air. The drill was pyro-technic operated and nearly had me thrown down and shielding my eyes as the periodic waves of heat hit my skin. The noise was overwhelming and I nearly failed to notice the hatch in the surface of the platform moving. A number of armed Romulin security personnel were scrambling up from beneath the opening.

I sighed and charged. With five flying sprints, dark braid streaming and hitting my back, I ran up, and into a breast kick. The solider's intercom splintered into shrapnel and I served him with an additional kick from my other foot to make certain my steps drove the shattered metal into his chest, but in doing so, sacrificed my footing and landed heavily on hip and hand. I rolled, but immediately felt a large pair of arms wrap around my torso and begin to throttle me efficiently. I leaned forward with a growl and kicked up and back, my already pulsing leg colliding with my assailant's head and neck. There was a satisfying crack, and the attacker let go, bemused. I rolled again this time getting to my feet, stepping back quickly and into a flying sidewinder kick with my better leg this time. My foot jarred with some ribs, and the third assailant crumpled. I heard a gun being presented at my back, and I acted instantly. Throwing my arms back, I seized the gunman's arm and broke it swiftly, the feeling from the arm like pulling roots heavy with soil from stone. After this, I pivoted and let my other elbow work my enemie's face and finally tossed him aside. Gasping, and feeling faint, I looked up to see how the others were doing. Sulu had struck two down with his knife and was kneeling dangerously close to the ledge.

"Sulu!" I called in confusion. A moment later, the helmsman was hauling Kirk up from the ledge and away from an unpleasant fate. Suddenly I reeled. I had seen this. I had been here. The dream. This was what I had seen somewhere in the dream. I gasped and fell to my knees, the creeping numbness and silence of shock settling into my bones. I clutched my head, willing reality back into it. The dream. No not again. It was coming.... I have been here. Alone. The darkness....

"Pike!" Sulu and Kirk were suddenly wide-eyed at my side. I fought to regain some of myself, and I waved them away with one hand as I battled to stand.

"Destroy the drill!!" I shouted. Squeezing my eyes shut I rose to both feet and tried to slow my breathing. I felt feverish and drugged, just as I had upon waking in the Enterprise only a few hours ago.

The boys quickly retrieved some firearms the security guards had been forced to discard, and opened a barrage of blasts straight into what looked like the working center of the drill. A moment later I removed my hands from my ears, hearing only wind. The drill had been disabled.

"Kirk to Enterprise," the cadet spoke into his communicator enthusiastically. "Beam us out of here!"

I was already lost as I tried to take a step towards the other two members of the landing party. I felt panicked, like a child unable to breathe. I stumbled as the platform suddenly began to lurch and travel beneath my feet. Through foggy eyes, I saw that it was not just my imbalance, as I watched the other two also struggling to keep their footing. I relaxed, however once I heard and saw the whirling light of de-materialization beginning around myself and my companions. My last thoughts lingered on the indwelling worry I held for my father somewhere on the Romulin ship and how wonderful it seemed to be able to sleep right at that moment. I closed my eyes and lost consciousness to the dark.

* * *

"Transport abilities are re-established!" Uhura called out behind her triumphantly from her station.

"Notify transport! Lock on to captain Pike and get him out of there! Chekhov, run gravitational sensors, I want to know what they're doing to the planet, and what the Romulin ship's trajectory relating to the Federation Parcel is." Spock instructed, hastily making his way over to the display. There was instantly an astonishing amount of information pouring over the bridge, pushing most readings and tabulations off the charts. The commotion on deck was tripled as information streamed in faster than it could be tabulated. Abruptly, a red alarm sounded from Chekhov's transport monitoring panel. Spock turned to study it.

"Is there a problem with Pike?" Spock pressed the navigations officer.

"No, sir, its coming from the landing party," Chekhov answered. Two of three icons suddenly blinked off of the screen and flashed green, indicating their safe re-entry into the ship's transport room.

"What's happening?" Spock thundered.

"I.... I can't lock onto her! I'm losing her! I'm losing her!" panic rang in the navigation officer's voice as he fought to catch the fluttering target on the screen.

"She's moving too fast! The signal,-I'm losing her!"

Before anyone had stood to examine what was happening, Spock was flying to the transport room.

"Clear the pad!" he bellowed as he flew into the receiving area, where Kirk and Sulu still scrambled to move from the chamber.

"She fell! Sir, we couldn't reach her!" Sulu fumbled out the words as he stumbled out of the Vulcan's way.

"What are you doing?!" Kirk started, beginning to understand what it was the Vulcan had in mind.

"Stop! Spock you can't do that!"

"Energize!" Spock thundered. And he was gone.

Spock materialized unsteadily onto the retracting drill. Searching around in a disorderly fashion, he fell twice before starting into a bolting run for the edge of the great machine. He streaked, long legs flying and leapt soundlessly over the side. The Vulcan dropped savagely, a sharp line for the small figure which was falling substantially closer to the surface of the planet. His face a stone mask of concentration, Spock sharply cast through the air until the small child-like form in his path hovered only meters from him. Throwing his limbs out about his body, he slowed rapidly and an instant later, collided with the girl in a wind-knocking impact. The air was forced from his lungs and he fought to reorient his senses as he and his unbalanced cargo now plummeted for the ground, spinning uncontrollably. Clinging to Noah's limp weight with one arm, the Vulcan searched for the release on her suit with the other. After an agonizingly long few seconds, he located the release and enfolded the professor as completely as he could in his limbs as he pressed the thing inward.

Nothing happened.

Nevertheless, suddenly there was a rush of frigid air as the whirr of de-materialization swept up all around the two falling figures. A high screeching and an utterly breathless moment later, Spock and Noah landed in a graceless heap in the transport room chamber.

"HAH! Yar-mauyo!" Chekhov exclaimed joyously from behind the manual control panel of transport. Spock gasped for air and began to untangle himself from the professor who lay slightly contorted beneath him.

"Medical," the Vulcan managed while trying to feel for Noah's pulse. It was there, but much too rapid and fitful. The first officer quickly placed three fingers on her blotched face and eased into her mind, looking for answers. Her mental activity was moving far more rapidly than anything he'd ever felt before. Straining, he placed his mind softly over hers, attempting to calm her movements, but was suddenly thrown back. Spock opened his eyes to find Noah seizing on the pad beneath him. The warmth from her core spoke of a deadly fever which had no plausible biological origins, and she screamed dreadfully, just as she had done after waking on the ship, and her limbs churned in the trembling waves of her fit.

"Professor!" Spock called, the force in his voice dampened by exhaustion. He turned her onto her side.

"Professor! Can you hear my voice?" he tried again, hoisting her body up onto his knees. His mind still pushed against the defenses her nightmares seemed to be hosting, but he could feel all the terror inside of her. The Vulcan steadily tried to assign a firm pillar of his own essence in the Professor's thoughts. A beacon for her primal instincts to cling to if the terror was stronger than her present reality could penetrate. McCoy presently burst into the transport room and was on his knees, a nurse at his side, attempting to scan the thrashing girl in Spock's arms.

"Noah!" Spock tried again. Abruptly, her movements slowed and tears spilled in abundance overflowing from her unblinking eyes. McCoy pressed an injection to her outstretched arm, but was cut off before he could administer what was inside. The professor had flailed, tossing McCoy's med kit aside and lurched up off the floor clinging to the Vulcan's neck desperately. She shook with the impossible fever and whimpered, babbling uncontrollably, still with eyes wider than her head could hold them in. McCoy reached for his patient again and was once more stopped by Noah's reaction. She screamed weakly, shying away from his touch like an animal. The nurse received the same response. Spock totaled what was happening, and tested his theory. Carefully, he began to pull his mind away from hers, slowly and deliberately easing his thoughts out of her. Right away, Noah screamed terrified and spasmodic. Her body convulsed once more, her vitals breaking down one at a time in response. Quickly, Spock just as carefully re-assimilated his mental presence back into her falling thoughts and Noah was stilled, her eyes slowly closing again and her breath restored.

"What did you do?" McCoy began, accusingly. Spock knelt at a loss for words only a moment before turning to the doctor and answering.

"I stabilized her, doctor,"

"Care to explain?"

"Whatever trauma the professor is experiencing, it is happening in her mind. I have established an inactive stable presence from my own mind until she returns to consciousness again,"

"And when will that be?" McCoy retorted, obviously displeased.

"I was hoping you would be able to tell me, doctor,"

McCoy scowled, reaching for his scanner once more, and reconsidering, handed it to Spock. The Vulcan nodded and suspended the monitor over Noah's torso before handing the thing back to its owner. McCoy looked at the scanner head with surprise.

"Says her vitals are all but jumping out of her skin,"

"Yes. I'm afraid she may have stabilized at a particularly high rate. Still, it is better than the alternative."

McCoy slowly nodded in agreement.

"Nurse," the doctor began cautiously. "We need to transport Mr. Spock and the professor to recovery as quickly as possible," Spock felt weary at the thought of maintaining this link with Noah until she could be broken from the fever.

"Three hours should be sufficient to cool her body and restore her core to a normal warmth, am I correct doctor?" McCoy looked over Noah's white, trembling frame with a medic's critical eye and nodded with a wispy grimace.

"I'm awful sorry, sir," the Vulcan raised an eyebrow in confusion.

"Since it looks as if I'll be confining you to sick bay with Ms. Pike here for the next three hours," the doctor explained with just a touch of pleasure in his voice at the prospect of ordering this Vulcan about.

* * *

PART SEVEN - No more pretend

Ten minutes later, the professor was slowly being lowered into a hot water basin. Three female nurses carefully cut away her uniform and loosed her hair into the warm water. Spock maintained the delicate hold of the professor's mind from behind a set of pale curtains. The attendants hesitantly attempted to comfort their peculiar patient as they tried to wrap her limbs in heated water towels or wash the grime and tangles from her dark hair. All this was made emotionally and physically difficult since the patient had ever since losing the physical contact with the first officer, been thrashing wildly and crying out with blistering intensity. The room in recovery had been restricted to only those presently in it and placed in the highest priority of protection brackets. Spock too found himself acutely uncomfortable in the radius of the professor's cries, wrenching as most no doubt found them. What was not known even to the Vulcan himself, was his mind's growing partaking in Noah's nightmare world. He too felt. Truly felt right up to the surface of his skin the terror, and shared the primal fear that the professor slept in, unable to escape. He hadn't experienced such dread since he was a child. A child caught between human nightmares and Vulcan dreamless states of sleep. Unable to escape. It made him never want to sleep again. And to think, the professor was in the midst of all of this just behind him. Nothing but his mind staked in the ground between their thoughts as she fought to hold onto it in her hurricane of visions. Spock started as one of the nurses passed him in a flurry. She appeared to be distressed and fled from the sequestered room in a manner that suggested she was not to return. Another one of the nurses, equally distressed had risen from the wide treatment tub and pressed the intercom next to the counter.

"McCoy here," a voice crackled in over the communicator.

"Sir, the patient is exhibiting signs of severe trauma, are you certain there is not something else we should be doing here? Nurse Samantha already left," she nearly whined with concern.

"I'm certain, nurse," McCoy's voice was surprisingly patient over the distance.

"May I request leave since the patient seems to be stabilizing?"

"Is Sarah still with the professor?"

"Yes sir, she seems to be fine. She got here much later than Sam and I did,"

"Alright then, you have leave. I've got my hands full here with captain Pike, who really has been through some trauma; so see to it that you keep monitoring the professor's frequency from your post in sick bay,"

"Thank you sir," the nurse was nearly in tears as she ended the call and collected her things to leave the horrid place. Nurse Sarah made a few unapproving noises over the din of her patient's cries.

"I'm sorry, Sarah, I can't do this anymore today. She'll be fine soon. I'm sure. I'll be down the hall, yeah?" there was no response Spock could hear before the door opened and the second nurse escaped down the into the hospice lobby. The Vulcan lowered his head attempting invisibility. He stood still, seeking to meditate or think on something besides what he was sharing in Noah's mind. It seemed sensible that he do well to keep his mind clear of clutter or independent apprehension should he be—.

Suddenly Spock realized that the professor's outcries had ceased. Only the occasional sound of splashing water could be heard.

"Nurse?" the commander investigated from his perch behind the curtain. His brow creased when there was no answer for a time.

"Nurse Sarah?" he tried again. There was a sob from the pool that was not the professor's.

"What?" the nurse wept openly. Angrily. "What can you do to me that she can't?!" Sarah coughed and sputtered out more angry words between grasping sobs.

"You will tell me what condition your patient is in—," Spock began forcefully.

"Or what?!" Sarah screamed hoarsely. At this, Spock drew the line. He stepped out from behind the curtain to view the situation and possibly call Doctor McCoy back from medical. What he saw, threw even his smooth Vulcan sentience reeling for an instant. Nurse Sarah was a clear visual statement of off-kilter with her crazed wide eyes and clammy skin. The medic was holding her patient's head under the water with strained muscles, now easing as Noah slowly seemed to relax under the waves. Spock's eyes widened.

"I couldn't make it stop," Sarah sobbed pathetically.

The towering Vulcan wordlessly dashed forward and plunged into the long bath, ceasing Professor Pike away from the delusional nurse.

"Report to sick bay at once Ms. Sarah," Spock heaved. Sarah simply nodded, her mind still reeling as she climbed the steps out of the bath in a trance. Her uniform dripped freely as she disappeared into the corridor. Spock turned his attention back to the sputtering girl in his grasp. Noah coughed and struggled to take in air with tiny gasps interrupted by more watery coughs. The Vulcan's touch had stabilized her once again as his simple presence in the room had aimed to do. It was clear to both now that the link between their two minds had found its way through the Vulcan touch-telepathy that Spock had been driven to employ in his first encounter with Noah's strange "illness", and merely passed further on again just a few hours before in the transport room.

"I'm.....mm ......... sorry..," Noah struggled, having gained some strength from the mended connection. Spock looked at the Professor for the first time since emerging from behind the privacy curtain. The girl's eyelids were lolling fitfully, dotted with burst blood vessels, her lips were purple and skin white or gray and sunken. Her naked body was still avidly shuddering with the fever, joints freezing up bitterly under his fingers. Her hair floated in ropey pieces all around her shoulders as she fought to keep her head up.

"Try not to speak just yet, Professor," Spock instructed calmly, shifting to sit on the shallow steps, hoping to save some of his drenched uniform from soaking more water further up his shirt, and trying to jostle the girl's head into the crook of his arm instead. Her heart in his ears was slow and lazy, while her blood rushed about trying to restore heat from her limbs to her torso. Spock eyed the temperature valve across the shallow bath and looked back to Noah's battling face.

"I'll be right back," he said reassuringly as he began to place her body down on the shallower steps.

"N ...mm....no," Noah wrestled out of her chattering mouth. "please," she implored, her hands wandering above the surface like an infant. Wrists stiffened and helpless, her long fingers trying to find holds on the Vulcan's tunic whilst her eyes fought to remain open.

"d... don..... don't go,"

Spock nodded, gripped by this girl's most earnest appeal. Slowly, he lifted her body into a perch on both arms and he waded carefully to the other side of the tiny cleansing pool. Holding her to him shyly, his free hand went to work on the dial. The commander turned the thermal circulation in the bath up to a safe 90 degrees. In another 10 minutes, he would increase this another 5, and so on. Hopefully, McCoy would have arrived by that time. Spock waded them back over to the steps and took a seat once more, doing his very best to keep his hands were he could support the professor but nowhere she would not approve of were she in a more lively state. This was not the first time Spock had noticed that the professor possessed a throng of modest light freckles on her cheeks and chest, but the first time he had appreciated their aesthetical value. He found that he was surprised they were not of a darker colour considering the shade of her hair, which was lapping at his own chest now. The tiny professor made a few more unidentifiable mumbled speeches there in the Vulcan's arms. Spock had adjusted the thermal settings of the water twice more, before he found there to be a small growing light in Noah's eyes. Born of a hollow want to encourage this light, this awareness, Spock willed his thumb to caress the skin of Noah's left temple back and forth.

"Spock?" a dazed Noah Pike asked the air between herself and the towering figure she felt close over her. Spock felt his body slide into an unanticipated fast-paced leap of what could be described as relief. The light wavered some in the girl's face as she lifted one unabashed hand to the Vulcan's face. Her heavily weighted fingers fell to one side of Spock's large nose and dropped down over his mouth and chin, her arm losing its assembled strength quickly. One heavy eyelid closed, followed by the other. Both opened again and blinked with more purpose. Spock heard Noah's heart rate increase once again.

"I can't see," Noah said softly, a reserve in her still trembling voice that sounded like the Noah Commander Spock knew. "I can't see," she half sobbed with alarm into his shirt. The Vulcan looked around at a loss.

"Professor, can you tell me how you feel?"

"I .... I don't...... I can't see," she stammered swallowing dry sobs intrepidly.

"Try to relax," Spock reached for her mind once more, placing three long fingers against her face. "I'm not going to hurt you." and he closed his eyes.

"Wait—," the professor began too late. Spock's mind had begun to descend onto her conscious one. Spock suddenly felt a whirlwind of mental pain. The connection he had accidentally forged now brought all its formally imbalanced weight over to his half of the nexus. Voices he recognized but could not distinguish cried out to him in agony. The death screams of countless minds sang in his ears and he was unable to dampen them, and suddenly he understood The terror ripped savage holes in his rational mind. His reason was tossed aside like a rag-doll facing a rabid wolf. He was small, mute, a fool in the arresting world of fear that swept up around him, darkening any thoughts of use or order. There was no number to follow, nothing to come after or behind. No order to things, no existing facts. In an instant, everything he had ever known was split away from him like his own skin. What is left when memories, facts, mannerisms, the very essences of who we are, are stolen away from us. Spock saw darkness, a vast nothing that both called to him and reduced him to the answer. What is left. The soul? Maybe. Spock felt as a child. The nothingness, the empty chaos, and the blind terror ravaged his mental consistence, poisoned, stripped naked and left out in the rain to die alone. Alone. He felt as if his soul, his lost awareness, his mind, to be the only thing in existence. The euphoria he had pictured, the ideal utopia, the feeling of being at one with all existence, was an agony. Alone. Like nothing he had ever dreamt of. A child, dying alone in the dark, Spock was reduced to, forced to reach out. He opened his mind and reached out desperately. Whatever he could find, he would snatch. Anything to escape the emptiness of immaculate terror. He stretched out blind and deaf and alone, afraid to breathe should he find that this also would leave him alone. Alone and dying in his own head with naught even a memory to comfort him.

*

I finally forced my eyes to focus on one thing as I fought my way to consciousness under the weight of countless drowsy medications, no doubt. More than a little annoyed, I found the shape of a Starfleet badge and strained to focus on this until I felt my own breath flowing in and out of me. I tried speaking but didn't have much luck, hearing only inarticulate sounds from somewhere in my throat that had obviously never had much employment. I felt exhausted, only wanting to sleep further, but the drive from my brain for answers was much stronger. I took stock slowly.

I was very much naked as I came to realize that I was also submerged in a bath of some kind. I must've still been afflicted by the hypothermia as numerous shivering fits dictated most of my movements. I felt one large hand on the small of my back and another holding my neck and head up out of the water which was notably cold. One thing I was grateful for regarding the narcotic medications in my blood was how well they relieved me of any concern for modesty as I realized my attendant was male. I blinked with more purpose trying to focus on the badge more fully, waiting for my vision to clear. It did not however, clear. The shadows of darker bits against lighter ones was the extent of my sight. Swallowing a twinge of panic, I licked my lips lazily and tried to clear my mind. Spock. Spock? Spock was there. Anchored politely in my consciousness. A Vulcan mind, distinctly that of Spock was standing by, holding my mind's hand gently at the door. I felt his vastly deeper Vulcan psyche sharing the space of my own comfortably. It felt like my soul was suspended inside a great oak tree. I followed the growth in the bark, the direction of the branches to limbs; his limbs. His arms. Arms like soft trees. I blinked again with a bearing this time. Straining into the shadows my eyes felt over, I found a match. My hands, it seemed, had also felt over the map of shades about me. A consistent traveling warmth beside my eye stirred my nerve, and I swallowed a tenderness in my throat, perhaps truly letting go for the first time in a long time.

"Spock?" I managed, my voice not sounding like mine at all. It was him. Before my reason had begun to calculate the plights of my immediate dazed senses, my fingers had begun to idly explore the unreadable shape of the face. Still, nothing brightened or was cast into focus. The dark was still there.

"I can't see," I tried, holding back the memory of the dream with all my quiet might.

"Professor, can you tell me how you feel?" Spock's voice sifted suddenly monotonous through my senses and I was flooded with relief. It rained down on my body through that deep balanced tone of calm.

I stumbled over a few attempts to answer his voice, but I gave up quickly, much too tired to feel concern over it. I was in his hands, and the dream was gone. That was good enough for me for the time being.

All of a sudden the door shut behind him. Spock had closed the door in our shared mind. I felt the weight of the terror lift from me and flood the room in our mind. It crawled under his skin, it stripped him of his logic, the single cry of his mind suddenly grasping my fingertips pitifully. With the fast break in the burden on my mind, I wrenched hot-blooded action to my limbs and leapt for the surface. I woke.

Still nearly blind, weak and clumsy as an infant, I gasped in life as my body woke fully in the small cleansing room of sick bay. I flailed in the water a moment as my body fought to catch up with my mind. My bare naked form immersed in warm water thrashed a moment for the surface. Spock had dropped me in his sudden mental plight... Spock!

"Spock!" I gasped. The shadow of the Vulcan had gone missing when the "door" had closed. My memories floated back to me now, mercifully slow, as they do when waking from any other dream. My rational mind was a flurry of reorganization and urgent bickering heat with itself. Spock still fell in our mind together.

"Spock!" I shouted again. "Help! Someon—," there was a tiny splash. Barely a ripple on the surface of the bath to my left. I drove my arms into the water to my shoulders. My wrist brushed against the fabric of a tunic of which I prayed was blue. I seized the material with all ten fingers and hauled a densely heavy form from the water. As I pulled, my back found the railing which led my ankle to find the steps of the bath. I yanked the water-logged creature with strength I did not have and tripped over the fourth step the heel of my foot encountered. I sloshed into a sitting position and once more, panicked, dragged the tall figure from the water. My hands searched, frenzied, from his back and collar, snaking around the waist, pulling, slipping again, pulling. I soon had the officer in a locked grasp around a broad chest, his head falling heavily on my naked collarbone. With more of a fight than I could've imagined, I combated my way up the steps with my limp Vulcan burden perched on my hip and in my ineffective arms until I collapsed, panting, on the last wide step. My lower legs still wrapped in the warmer seeming water, I shoved Spock as far onto the floor space as I could. I took one solitary breath before bracing myself and willing just a few more minutes of adrenaline into my body as I shot myself forward onto the floor as well and began feeling my way around the tiles until I found my first officer's chest again. Nearly gagging as I chocked my way to breath, I felt for his temple. My fingers swept over one pointed ear and through some clumps of wet hair. Finally both hands had three fingers against his face and I strained to clear my own mind.

Spock.

He gasped bitterly. The Vulcan expelled a mouthful of water and coughed painfully in a deep register three times before taking in more ragged breaths.

"Spock? Are you here?" I tried. There was a moment before I partially collapsed onto the commander's back as he had risen with his first gasp. As far as I knew, Spock had experienced any part of the dream; from the simple euphoric feeling of falling to the indefinable terror that seemed to reduce the mind to blubbering infancy, but I had little potency left in my muscles to help with. I continued to blink, hoping for vision, while Spock fought for clarity itself. The link between us was fading slowly, naturally now, but still left an imprint. I felt all that had passed through Spock. A billowing heave of guilt crashed into me and I collapsed fully against the Vulcan's soggy back, fighting tears and fighting just as hard for air.

Everything that had happened, that had passed between our minds together, that brief moment of eternity when they were woven together, worked my thoughts like the air worked my lungs there on the floor of the tiny cleansing room. Spock was shaking inexorably.

"There was—," he began. Almost a minute passed by before I realized the trembling was not mine, that Spock had spoken, that his voice was wrought with fright, and that the quivering Vulcan was clinging to me like a child.

"You were—,"

"I know," I finished. Tears coursed freely, overflowing in my blind eyes and down the commander's shoulders. I shuddered with relief. Out of the dream; once again escaping the emptiness to find life still there. Reason, logic, light, pain, ...touch. Spock had managed to somehow wrap is body around mine, desperately throwing himself around me, clutching as much of the contact as possible to both his physical and mental bodies. His mind still reeled, our minds no longer completely one, (in the Vulcan sense) only our bodies, our forms, left petrified in the wake of the dream.

We wept and quaked together in the tiny space, making tiny echos against the dim tiles. The small vacuous moment made tremendous by the extent of our knowledge of each other now. His face buried deep in the side of my neck, his arms constantly traveling about my back, compressing what remained of our sudden understanding of the terror we had both now faced. Propriety was a malignant and distasteful doctrine in this place, there was only the aftershock that existed, that mattered. Logic had been lashed with an invisible cutthroat authority. Only the child remained for now. Only the deliverance of knowing the dark was gone, and we were not alone. I clung to the Vulcan just as desperately as he pressed me to him, breathing hot air in gasping huffs that rolled down my chilled back now and then.

"You faced this as.... as a child?" he whispered cautiously into my dripping hair.

"Yes," I murmured into the soaked tunic, fingers digging further into his back at having lost the rhythm of our dual breathing. Spock pulled away, hastily pushing his hands against the sides of my blanched face, wiping my roped hair away out of my eyes in one stroke. My eyes, still blind, sought his aimlessly as I tried to smile. I could sense the pouches of salty water shivering on his dark eyes.

"Clearly," Spock exhaled shakily. He swallowed before continuing. "I still have much to learn about human perpetuality,"

What happened next was a blur. Sometimes I still wonder if it really happened. But not because of the remnants of narcotic drugs that were still dissolving in my veins, but because sometimes it felt like a true dream. Not the dream, no nightmare, no memories that did not belong to me, no darkness. Just Spock. Better than that. Myself and Spock, if only for a while were truly open. Raw, bare, and without masks. There were no words. Our empathic link had faded to a shared psychosis of all the world except for each other. To put it in words sounds so wild-eyed and romantic, but we did not share our bodies in that strange hour of hypnosis, no, we shared our minds. Something much more intimate and quite truly more – for lack of a better term – ...fascinating.

When we were both stronger, exchanged a few more shaky words on the status of our mission, my father's condition, and what exactly had transpired, Spock wordlessly continued with the task I had been placed in the cleansing area to submit to in the first place. His mind motioned silence for us both, and I obliged without query. The Vulcan moved about the room with that same grace he always possessed, but with something else alongside it. Something I had trouble identifying at first. He locked the doors, turned off all communication from the room, and finally began filling the shallow bath with warmer water. I still felt the impression of the dream and the drugs all throughout my body, and was confined to my place on the tiles while I watched. I could see more of the world now. The shapes held some colour, and the shadows did not move as they had before, instead showing me truly where there was light and where there was movement. It was repose. As I watched Spock's form move about easily, I placed what it was I saw differently in his motions. It was a comfort, a peacefulness, a true easiness I had never thought to place against his body. He felt at home. I admit, I did not know what to make of this latest discovery, but then again, I couldn't think of why I should be concerned in the slightest.

He crouched beside me once more, slipping his arms beneath my wrung limbs and bearing me back to the cleansing tub. Our eyes became instruments of discovery, and for the first time in my life, I understood why they had been hailed to so many times in literature as "windows to the soul". Spock then proceeded to rinse the rest of my tangled hair. His hands were surprisingly nimble and competent at his unorthodox task. I felt the urgency in his movements as he finished, turning my buoyant body back to face him again. Our minds fleetingly relieved at the contact once more between the "windows".

Spock proceeded to then wash my skin. Like locked hypnotists, our eyes, our minds, studied each other like the battling scientists we were. I doubt that Spock looked at my body once as his hands slowly and gently cleansed and rinsed it. His face was the soft stone it was when he was bent over the sensor monitor on the bridge, but there was a light in his eyes that looked and felt like home. He tenderly reached for my hands now and then, taking one or the other as his working tools, when guiding the soap-salts over the more intimate areas of my flesh.

haha! close your mouth... new chapters on their way soon!