Title: Green Fission
Fandom(s): Star Trek TOS/Reboot (I wrote it with both versions in mind)
Characters/Pairings: Spock, OCs, Kirk (no slash)
Rating: R
Genre: Angst, drama
Warnings: Xenophobia, Suicide attempt, psychological bullying, sexual suggestions
Summary: The biggest threats are those that are intangible. The biggest fear is that which makes no sense.
A/N: I don't own the rights to the original series or the new movies of Star Trek. I am borrowing the characters and concepts for non-profit creative purposes.

It was a small, bleak space station on which Captain Kirk was currently stranded; little more than a length of piping drifting aimlessly through space. It was a necessary place without luxuries; nobody was there who didn't have to be.

And as Kirk steamed in the sterile waiting room, he tried for a hundredth time to make sense of his own presence here; the chain of events that led him to this timeless tube in an expanse of space so empty and unremarkable it was worthy of non existence. Like being dropped in a dream, he once again failed to trace the contingency. It wound out of the window and veered off into the emptiness like a dying firework.

Before him was the door that emblemised the limits of his understanding; the stopper in time through which the men and women in white coats entered and left efficiently, rarely meeting his eyes. When they did they were cold and clinical. They thought they were above this insanity because they could touch it, map it according to a hundred other cases, paw at it and stitch it up to some minimum state of recovery. Words like 'stress' and 'psychosis' were carefully placed around him, as though he were a wild animal to be coaxed out of hiding with the passive prospect of food. When he tuned in, they put down other things. Mental incompatibility. Hybrid Syndrome. Those phrases sat opposite him in the vacant chairs of the waiting room, staring at him and waiting to be confronted.

He would have been a fool to believe the doctors understood this any better than he did. They didn't know Spock beyond the pale flesh that betrayed him. They didn't know that it didn't make sense for the world behind that door to exist if the man in it was Spock; if the green rivers on the white tiled floor had mapped the body of his first officer whom having left the enterprise for just a month, was gone a week and then attempted suicide.

Doctor McCoy had requested to be present during the statement from Captain Hunter. He'd been granted this liberty informally on account of his friendship with the other Captain, and formally in the position of Spock's doctor. In truth his doctoring had not extended further than his initial visit to the examination room: a trip to simply verify the truth of the incident, and one that had haunted his eyes upon his exit, at which point his restless appetite for understanding had taken over, and he had pursued his old friend. He had looked angry, but accepted the hand Hunter placed on his back; he knew the man too well to blame him. This was a broad, nauseating anger that could not be offloaded anywhere, and in the midst of it he had taken little interest in Kirk beyond a quiet growl at the nurse - "don't let him in until he's stable." Kirk had been too lost to respond.

He found himself staring hard at the door. Six days. Not even a week. Six days in which the logical, witty and graceful man to which he had bid farewell before his first officer's temporary transferral to the Great White, had suffered a breakdown and attempted to end his life. For the past hour he'd been terrified of Spock succeeding, but now that he was stable, a new fear took its place. A fear that there was no good reason for this.

Captain Hunter was a good man. A skilled captain and great fun to be around. He'd known him at the academy and frequently spent time with him and McCoy when they were on shore leave. Those of the crew he knew were friendly and competent, and those he didn't would not be less than a man of Hunter's calibre would demand of his crew. Kirk had been furious upon encountering the other Captain at the station, demanding to know what his friend had been subjected to on his ship. But now it was clear the man was just as shocked as himself. There had been no abuse, he'd insisted. All he could say was that Spock had been having a hard time adjusting to work aboard the Great White. He had had trouble mixing with crew members, but there was no aggression on their part. And almost guiltily, Kirk found himself considering this, even as he sat praying for his friend. Hunter's vessel was everything he knew - regular human officers who knew what they were doing and maintained a pleasant, upbeat atmosphere in which to work. Hunter was an honest, straight-talking man. A friend. It would have taken something monstrous to drive Spock to this. There were no monsters aboard that ship.

And that was what made Kirk linger before entering the examination room after learning that Spock was stable. He had been desperate to see his friend, and all but burst through when he first arrived. But now he was afraid of what would meet his eyes when he opened that door. The gravity of what Spock had done had settled upon him in the waiting room, and the reality behind the door had melted into something abstract and incompatible with the fabric of his world. Feelings had heaped up behind it, anger and fear and guilt. How would Spock look at him? What could he say? How would the man he knew break through what he had done unscathed, and what was left if he couldn't? Kirk knew Spock out was of logic. And when the logic didn't come, his own storm of emotions would inevitably fill the void, because it wasn't the Spock he knew who had betrayed himself and everyone who valued him and all but torn out Kirk's heart. And Kirk was afraid he would never forgive him for what he had tried to do.