A/N Written in memory of Leonard Nimoy. You are, and always shall be, greatly missed.
I disregarded Abrams!verse Canon for this, just so you know.
Do not grieve, Admiral. It is logical.
I have been, and always shall be, your friend.
The words played out in Ambassador Spock's mind. He almost smiled wryly to himself (even now, he couldn't let go of his Vulcan training), thinking of what McCoy's reaction would be.
Spock, if you can't let loose when you're dyin, when can you?
There was no McCoy now, to carry his katra. No Jim either, to search for him throughout the galaxy. Had Spock been fully human, he would have regretted the fact that he would end his life surrounded only by Healers, instead of the friends who had become his family. Instead, he merely faced the inevitable, and allowed his human side to be glad that he would no longer be the last, lingering member of a crew long dead. Cheating death was a thing he intended to do only once.
He looked out the window at the red Vulcan sky, the outline of Mount Seleya on the horizon. If the elders had their way - the other elders; Spock often had to remind himself he was one of them now - his katra would be added to the Hall of Ancient Thought, to guide successive generations of Vulcans with the knowledge and wisdom he'd gained throughout his life. He had tried to protest, to no avail, and in truth, he hadn't tried that hard. The Romulans he knew had risked everything to return him home before the end, and he would not repay them with ingratitude. Besides, the loss of his diplomatic and scientific experience would be nothing short of a theft from the people of Vulcan, and the fact that an eternity alone in the Hall, with none of his friends would be his personal version of the human concept of Hell meant little. It was logical.
Time seemed to mean flow strangely now. Spock spent more time in his memories than he did paying attention to the Healers that constantly hovered above him, and he could no longer tell the difference between the days. Although this, too, was logical. If there was nothing that could be done for him, then why not spend his last hours remembering happier times. He, Jim and McCoy wandering the corridors of the Enterprise, not paying attention to where they were going, just talking quietly about whatever came into their minds. He and Jim plotting escape from Sickbay. He and McCoy arguing purely (although he would never admit as much to anyone) to make Jim laugh.
By the end, Spock could no longer tell the difference between his memories and the reality of his dying. It was comfortable here, and he liked it. If he was alarmed by this sudden gap in his logic, he let it pass. The light in his memories seemed so much friendlier than the harsh light of Vulcan, the people more familiar in the old blue and gold of Starfleet, and he let himself sink into them more and more as the days passed. It was a rest from the pain and the discomfort, and the loneliness that had plagued him since his Starfleet career had ended.
Even the concept of time seemed to disappear; the days running into each other in the starship that lived only in his memories. The only difference he could observe, his old scientific training returning to the forefront of his mind, was that more people seemed to notice him the longer he stayed in his memory of the Enterprise. At first it was only a security ensign who nodded at him as he passed, as if he were still First Officer. Then it was a science lieutenant who stopped him quickly to ask about a chemical experiment. Spock answered correctly without even stopping to wonder why he still remembered such an unimportant detail about an experiment done almost a century ago. Then a few helmsmen, asking about course corrections on the otherwise empty bridge. It would have been fascinating, if he hadn't been searching for people who would never be there. There was no reason for them to be; not if humans had their own form of the afterlife. He had always wondered, and now, he supposed, he would never know.
Spock stopped outside his old quarters, wondering why, in all his memories, his quarters had never appeared before now. Thinking back on it, he hadn't returned to the little room with the Healers in quite some time, and the only logical conclusion to come to was that he had reached his destination. "Crossed over," as McCoy might have put it. Interesting, that the sign his mind had settled into the Hall of Ancient Thought was the recreation of the one place that he had felt most at home. Each mind, he supposed created its own "home" of sorts, to spend eternity. The only thing, he assumed, that the Hall couldn't recreate for him, was the people he had known here. But still, the comfort of familiar surroundings was nice, after so long on Romulus. There were worse places to spend eternity.
The door opened at his approach, and Spock stepped through, seeing his old quarters reproduced exactly. The computer matrix that kept the Hall of Ancient Memory running must enhance memories as well as store them, because every detail was there, every wall hanging, every little chip in the paint.
"'Bout time you showed up," a voice said. A voice with a Southern accent, and Spock turned around to see Leonard McCoy standing in his doorway, smiling widely. He appeared young, as he had on the Enterprise, dressed in science blue. Spock stared at him in shock, glancing down to register that he was also now wearing the old-style blue Starfleet uniform. "Aren't you gonna invite me in?" McCoy asked, stepping inside and taking a seat on Spock's couch. "We were beginning to think you'd never get here."
Questions crowded Spock's mind, one after another, before he finally settled on asking, "We?"
Behind McCoy, entering Spock's quarters with a small smile, was the last person Spock had ever expected to see again: James T. Kirk. Spock stopped as disbelief took him over. "Jim?"
Jim Kirk smiled wider, looking as if he'd never aged past thirty, even though he'd been in his sixties when he disappeared on the Enterprise-B. "Yes, Spock, it's me."
Spock raised his eyebrow, "This is illogical."
McCoy rolled his eyes, "Now I know for sure it's him."
"You cannot be in the Hall of Ancient Memory," Spock said more forcefully, ignoring McCoy. "You are not Vulcan."
"But you are," Kirk said. "You've been carrying your memories of us around with you all these years. Did it never occur to you that we'd be here, knowing that this... whatever it is, preserves memories?"
Truthfully, it had not. Spock hadn't had any idea what to expect from the afterlife. Certainly not this, and he quashed the hope that rose at the sight of them. Living a dream, if this could in any way be termed living, was not what he had in mind for his afterlife. "Then, you are not real. Only memories," he said to Kirk, trying not to let disappointment cloud his tone.
"And what are you now, if not your memories?" Kirk countered. "Isn't that what this Hall is for? To preserve memory? Why should it only preserve the facts and figures you learned in your life? Why not the people too?"
Spock had no answer, nothing to counter the argument that he was no more than a collection of memories. He was, and what did it matter anymore, if this was the result?
"Jim, for once, I think he's speechless!" McCoy said with a grin.
Spock opened his mouth to respond, but Kirk started laughing anyway before he got the chance, and Spock simply allowed himself to relax, knowing his friends would take it as an answering smile on his part. It all felt so natural, as if none of the intervening decades had ever happened. As if this was where he belonged, and he had finally come home.
And if this was death, whether it was a memory or a soul, a computer hard drive or another dimension, who could say it wasn't heaven after all?