Disclaimer: I do not owe Star Trek. If I did, Kirk would be mine ;)
Dedicated to my friend Anna Chan
Once again, I have managed to do it. Manage to do an impossible task. Against all odds, I have succeeded in repairing the Warp Core and the USS Enterprise – my ship, won't crash. My crew will survive. Unlike me, I think. Right now, I can feel it. I feel my lungs burn with every breath I take. I feel my heart race, race to its last beat. It is the radioactivity, of course. Scotty has warned me, but like so often, I simply refused to listen to someone else. But finally, I can see the light, and I stumble towards the door which marks the escape for me. The escape from a nightmare which began with coming to Cronos. With all what's left of my strength, I push the button and wait for the decontamination to end.
Of course it is him who comes to see me. The look on his face is so different from all the times before. Distantly, it reminds me of making him snap, forcing him to pass the position of the Captain on to me. His eyes are full of emotion and he has never looked more human – and more breakable – than in this second. This expression is what I am going to keep in my mind. Not all the times he has hurt me by refusing to admit we were friends. We are friends. But maybe he doesn't know what this means. No, he does know, right now. I can tell from the look in his eyes.
It hurts a lot to speak, but I have to say something, ask him something. "I'm scared, Spock. How do you choose not to feel?" I would have never admitted it before, but I am afraid of dying. Afraid of meeting my fate. The only thing that makes it…acceptable…is the fact that my crew will live. Like any good Captain, I have offered up my life to save theirs. Spock's lips move and his voice is so low I can barely understand what he is telling me. "I do not know. Right now I am feeling." It is not the answer I had expected, but it is an honest answer. Not that he would have lied to me or to anyone at all. An image crosses my mind: My father, a man who has died in a similar situation. I will see him again. This gives me strength and my blue eyes meet one last time with Spock's. And finally, this is where all my feelings stop.
I wake up sitting on the Captain's chair on board of the Enterprise. Yet I am alone, nobody is here with me; neither Chekov nor Uhura, neither McCoy nor Sulu nor Scotty. And – what makes me feel the worst – not Spock. I can't imagine being in a world without him. That's a strange thought. He was supposed to outlive me, having a lifespan much longer than my or any other human's. But there was a moment when I thought that this wouldn't matter. Spock being all alone in a volcano ready to erupt. The irony of this sentence was evident then and it is evident now. Yet I couldn't let him die, this man, my friend, my brother.
Even though it had almost cost me my job, I would be willing to repeat this over and over again, time after time, only to save him. Sure, he is a member of my crew and I was willing to die for them – I think I have died for them – he means more to me. The pain of his betrayal was bad, but it was all forgotten the moment he saved me when trading the bombs in for me. This look of concern on his face shocked me right to my heart and a wave of emotions crushed down on me.
I've always been much of a playboy, toying around with countless women, having meaningless sexual affairs. But this…I am not into men, for sure. So I fought down these overwhelming, intense feelings and concentrated on the one task I had to fulfil: Repairing the Warp Core, saving the lives of all these beloved people on board of the Enterprise – including Spock.
It was him who gave me the strength for this task. His image right before my inner eye carried me all the way to the Warp Core and back. Even as my body stopped working for me, I managed it all the way back, back to him. And of course he was waiting for me. All these emotions evident in his eyes made me feel like crying. He had accepted me as a true friend. I recall the last memory, a memory of peace, the way our hands almost touched, in this one gesture that means the world for him.
And suddenly, the pain is back, the emotions flood me once again. I clutch my chest, shut my eyes for a moment, before I open them again, gazing above me in wonder.
I am lying in a bed; McCoy is standing next to me, telling me something about how I haven't been really dead, but that it was quite close. Yet I can't manage to listen to his explanations, mostly because of the fact that he is here with me. Spock. The one all my thoughts revolve about is here with me. There is no need to say anything; the love shining brightly in his eyes is enough to comfort me. It will take time, for sure. But we have a lot of time now that I am in the world of the living once again.
Sometime later, our eyes meet again in a similar way, this time - for the first time - in public, not in privacy like countless times before. We share a much closer bond now and I know that it makes both of us happy. I open my mouth to say the words that have defined my entire life, with all the hopes and dreams: "Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before." And while I speak this oath, Spock moves his mouth along with mine. His lips form one word, a word I finally understand, word that shows that we mean the universe to one other: T'hy'la.