Everything was silent.
They were in a wide, vast, green, rich, flourished forest. Trees that beckoned to touch the sky housed birds, birds who were chirping, singing, opening their little beaks to tell the world their story, but they did so silently.
The wind was blowing, bristling the leaves that hung from the thick branches, wisping and weaving through the trunks of the woods like the woods were a maze, and the wind was hunting for the exit to bargain for a prize. But the wind did so silently.
The southern doctor sprinting towards them, his thumping and hammering feet over 400 yards away, was shouting and screaming and waving his hands. But his mouth was open, his face twisted in fury and horror, and he screamed silently.
Silent, because that's the only thing Jim Kirk heard after the sound of the ancient gun in the Klingon's hand went bang. And it went bang into the Vulcan's back, the Vulcan who was standing beside Jim Kirk and then he was standing in front of Jim Kirk, and the gun went bang, and Jim Kirk heard silence.
The world was silent and slow, and a strange look of confusion crossed Spock's face as he began to fall. And the world was so slow, Kirk could see the confusion fall into that of blankness as the Vulcan fell, his consciousness diminishing into nothing before his body even hit the ground. And Kirk could not hear the rustle of Spock's feet falling beneath him, nor the soft crinkle his science blue shirt made when Kirk reached out and clutched his forearms, trying as he could to keep the Vulcan upright, but there was nothing awake in that Vulcan body to accomplish the task. And Kirk dropped to his knees as gravity pulled down on Spock's limp body, and Kirk could not hear, but he could feel, and he felt the ramming of his shins hitting the dark forest dirt, and he felt the hot tear slide down his face as Spock's head fell loosely over his arm and and he felt the purest form of terror bolt into the center of his chest and he felt it overcome his entire body.
Jim Kirk could not hear, but he could taste the dryness in his mouth, he could taste the words that were stuck in his throat, the cry of anguish that would not surface because it was hoarded inside his body. He could taste the hope purge from his belly and shrivel into a pile of ash that sat on the tip of his tongue while his mouth held agape in absolute devastation of the weight that was in his arms.
The world was silent, his ears pulsing with wavelengths of nothing, the universe mute and his insides screaming. He could not hear, but he could smell the copper in the air, the copper that was blossoming on top and beneath Spock's body, the green of it spreading like oil in water to cover his science blue shirt. And the green was so thick, and so much, Kirk knew he could never look at that color the same ever again.
And Doctor McCoy, who could not bring himself to end the life of a mouse, ripped his phaser away from his hip and he ran and he ran closer, once too agonizingly far to do a thing about what just occurred, but too far he was no longer, and he brought the phaser up, knowing it was already on kill, and not having time to switch it to anything else as the Klingon was raising his crude weapon again, and McCoy squeezed the trigger and the Klingon dropped to the ground.
And his captain, James Kirk, was shaking the body in his arms and yelling the body's name, and the body was not moving and looked strikingly similar to Commander Spock but also looked strikingly similar to a corpse, and McCoy suddenly felt like he desperately needed to vomit.
Jim Kirk could not hear the doctor's pleas to release his grip, but he could see, see his medical hands reaching over and taking the Vulcan from his arms and laying him on the ground. And he could not hear the whirring of the tricorder that was being waved over Spock, and he could not hear the very forced and quick and shaking breaths that were expelling from his own lungs, and he could not hear anything but silence.
But he saw the stillness of the greatest friend he'd ever had, laying like a lifeless shell in the wide, vast, green, rich, flourished forest. And he heard absolutely nothing.
And as he hunched into himself, his grief ripping apart his body, he watched the doctor and he watched Spock.
And he watched — and it was hardly perceptible and barely anything more than that of a wave in a cresting ocean, the billowing of blades of grass in the breeze, the shadow of a candle's flame — the first three fingers on Spock's left hand twitch weakly.
And the silence, in half a second, buzzed into a great array of sound and Jim Kirk heard the rushing of his heartbeat, the electric and hopeful shouts of the doctor beside him, the very orbit of the planet they were on as it rotated round it's galling sun, and he heard his own voice breaking, yelling, commanding into the communicator,
"BEAM US UP."