Middle, a star trek: 2009 fanfic

A/N: This is basically a typical Star Trek episode, except for the K/S. (Although it could be argued….)

I've written this story in bad moods, good moods, and while under the influence, thus interesting tonal shifts. It gets a little less weird after the tiny planet. Maybe. Good luck.

Middle

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

—Dante Alighieri, La Divina Commedia

Spock is walking down a street.

It is a very long street. He brushes his hand over his eyes.

He blinks a few times because his lashes hurt, which is strange.

He pauses. One of the buildings flickers. He doesn't know why. And his lashes hurt.

He considers wondering why, but there is so much street to walk down, so he keeps walking down it.

The houses are white. There are peculiar boards across the outside of them. Spock thinks that he has seen this style in pictures from ancient Terra. The windows are black and glassy. They seem darker than they are.

There is no grass or greenery. The street is cobbled; its color is pale and sand and dust and brown-pink, that color that is not like a desert, but is reminiscent of one: a place that once had water but has it no longer. The sky does not look blue, although it is.

He trips over nothing at all and tumbles along, farther than he generally would, because something is pulling him forwards. He comes to a stop, facedown in the street. It is not paved, but there are tracks in it—the patterns of a thousand feet, beating it down until it gives up and dies.

He stands up. He is unharmed. He brushes gravel off his hands. He takes a step and a chasm opens in front of him and the land itself grows sharp, black teeth.

"Don't worry," says Kirk. "I made you trip."

Spock is in a gunmetal room, seated on a bed. The bed is rich black mahogany. It is made with thick cotton sheets and headed by six blank down pillows, all white. He is in the middle of it, legs crossed, and Kirk is across from him, not on the bed, leaning his elbows on his knees as he perches on an industrial, aluminum chair.

"What is happening?" Spock asks, trying to be calm.

"I don't know," says Kirk, looking very serious. "I seem to have some measure of control over what is happening, but not much. I was here, and I made this bed and this chair. And then I saw you and I realized what was going to happen, and I made you trip."

"What do you remember?" Spock asks.

"Before this?"

"Yes."

Kirk blinks once, and his brows furrow. "Nothing."

There is no light source in the room, but there is light. It makes no sense and Spock would give nearly anything to have his tricorder with him because this metal also makes no sense—he puts his palms against it and feels strange things. This is insane, and it becomes more insane when Kirk, almost apologetically, creates a cat.

The cat is pure white with brown eyes. It is small and delicate and beautiful and Kirk gathers it in his arms.

"Where did that come from?" Spock demands, pulling his hands away from the flat walls.

"I made it," said Kirk, stroking the cat's head. The cat is not purring, but it is not trying to get away. Its head is tucked down, and its eyes are huge, huge, liquid, brown, bright, cold.

"How?"

Kirk stares down at the cat's face. Its eyes blink quickly, and it shifts so that it is more comfortable.

"I wanted it and it was," said Kirk. "I think I can—"

And Spock is on the street again.

He does not try to walk down the street. There is no compulsion pushing (very gently; so gently he didn't notice it the first time) at his mind, requiring forward movement. The houses continue infinitely on, before him and behind him. He can see, very far out, so far away that he thinks it may be a mirage, the black of the chasm. He looks left and right and sees the black extend across the entirety of the flat landscape, a seam in the reality of this place.

"Jim," Spock says.

There is no reply.

So Spock sits down and waits.

There is sun, but he does not burn; he grows hungry and thirsty, and though he cannot eat, he does not die. The sun never moves from its point high in the corner of the sky, and the chasm never disappears or stirs.

He does not know what happens to his mind. He sits there for so long that he has never done anything but sit there. He does not ache, but he is uncomfortable. He is not lonely or sad, but he misses—something. He does not know what he misses, other than Kirk. But he always misses Kirk, even when he is with him.

In the time of that place, forty-seven days pass, and Spock sits. On the twenty-ninth day, he gets up and tries to walk left, into the desert, but he cannot go past the houses: he is turned back by nothing at all. The entire adventure takes an hour, and when he sits back down, he does not regret not having tried sooner. He does not regret anything. He simply does not.

Sun, houses, street. Color. No meaning, just light, patterns, burning shapes into his eyes. No change, no shift, no surprise. Static. Still.

He finally blinks. It is a nothing action that he invests no importance in, but when he opens his eyes, he is back in the gunmetal room with Kirk.

"I have even less idea what is going on," says Kirk.

The gunmetal room is larger. It resembles an ultramodern apartment now. There is a bedroom with only a bed in it; a dining room with only a small table and two chairs in it; a bathroom with only a toilet and a shower and a sink in it; a living room with only a couch in it. And there is one room that is very large and connected to all of the other rooms, and it is filled to the very brim with computers, weapons, chemicals, and cat toys.

Kirk pets the cat. "I had to give her something to do while I was working."

"What is her name?" Spock asks, running his hand over her smooth head. She turns and sinks her teeth into his little finger without any hesitation whatsoever, and before Spock can react, she lets go and starts licking him, the painful sandpaper of her tongue overriding the stinging shock of her sharp teeth.

"She does that sometimes," says Kirk, distracted. "Okay, what do you think we need? I got all I can think of. Lots of phasers. This computer can kinda understand this place. And I got a lot of screens to go with it, and a few PADDs. There's a network, and diagnostics. A tricorder. It says these walls aren't here. I tried walking through them, pretty much everywhere, but I couldn't. And the ceiling, and the floor. Have you ever tried to walk through a floor? It's difficult."

"Do you not think that we are missing something?" says Spock, staring at the cat.

"What?" says Kirk.

"I do not know," says Spock. "I wondered if you noticed."

"I do. I have noticed," says Kirk slowly. "But no. I don't know what it is."

They stare at each other for a moment.

"How long was I gone for?" Spock asks.

"In your time, forty-seven days," says Kirk. "In mine, sixteen. I don't understand the discrepancy."

"Or any of it," murmurs Spock. "How did I get back?"

"It's complicated," says Kirk, and explains.

It is complicated. Kirk has found a way to control the space they're in, but it's very, very rudimentary. The place they're in is more real than most of the space they could be in, and it's 100% more real than the chasm, which is evidently—

"Sort of a big problem," says Kirk, staring at a screen. "It may be why we're here."

"How do you know this?" says Spock. The cat is rubbing up against his ankles. She hasn't blinked since before Spock spent so long on the street.

"It makes a mark in the diagnostics," says Kirk, pointing at the screen. "It says, '0', over and over and over again. It's nothing. It's actually nothing. It's a black hole. But it's not—I know what black holes look like, and it's not that, though it's close. It's an abyss. It's a void."

"Is it moving?" Spock asks. "Surely that is the only way it can be a danger to us."

"No, it is not moving," says Kirk. "But it was moving once. I think it's how we got here."

The cat's name is Atom. There is no reason why, as far as Spock can tell.

Kirk says he can make more, but he doesn't want to, because when he makes something, he cannot get rid of it. He shows Spock the room he made to hold the things he didn't need.

"There is so much food here," Spock says. "And it has been here for a long time. Why has it not rotted?"

"Time isn't moving," says Kirk.

"But days pass."

"Hey, I'm just reading the data," shrugs Kirk.

Kirk is different. Spock knows it. He cannot tell how Kirk is different. He thinks that Kirk was livelier at one point; he laughed more and talked more and looked at Spock more. But he mainly looks at screens now, and at Atom, who still hasn't blinked.

They sleep in the same bed. Spock has forgotten something here, too. It is either supposed to be strange or wonderful, but instead it is a fact. They need to sleep in this reality, and they do, for nearly three hours at a time. Kirk has a clock in every room (but they are strange-looking clocks, and Spock does not like them).

"We have to find what we have missed," says Spock, staring at a screen. It is showing him things that should make more sense than they do, but something is missing, something important, something huge and crucial. He feels like he is falling through a dark tunnel, and he has been falling for so long that he has just realized he is falling, and he will be falling forever, unless he catches himself on the sides of the tunnel, which are nearby, but so far, because he has no way to reach them.

"Where?" says Kirk. "Where?"

There is no demarcation between the days. Like too much pain they pile on top of each other and are blotted out. Time passes and passes and its passing is not marked or missed, but it hurts anyway, like a bruise aches without anything pressing it.

"I think that we are not real here," says Spock finally, from behind another screen. Kirk picks Atom up and strokes her. Atom does not purr or blink, but she pushes her head into Kirk's hand and kneads his arm.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I do not feel real," says Spock.

"Look at that," says Kirk. "A Vulcan, relying on feelings."

"They are what I have, at this point," says Spock. "And they are better than nothing."

"If you can do something about it, then do," says Kirk, looking into Atom's brown eyes. "I am doing what I can."

So Spock throws himself into the data. He stops eating or sleeping or drinking or washing—not that any of that matters, since he is static—and again, time folds away like water falling into the ocean. It was never there and it was always there, and Spock is starting to think in terms of these extremes, but with the full awareness that he is trapped somewhere in the middle.

Finally, shuffling through all the numbers, he finds a string of them hidden away inside of a coil of programmed light under the heading "MORTAL." He splits the string open with a knife and the coordinates that fall out are in another reality like the reality of the street. Without telling Kirk, Spock constructs a passageway to that reality, feeds the coordinates into the gold-toothed mouth he built, and when he blinks, his eyelashes hurt, and he and Kirk are in the new reality.

"What did you do?" Kirk says, without any real venom. Spock thinks, His eyes are dull. He realizes that they have been dull for all this time.

"I have found something," says Spock, looking around. "I think that the missing piece may be here. You go left and I will go right. We should meet up at the back."

They are on a planet the size of a few city blocks. The atmosphere is thin. Space is pressing in on them, the stars bright and urgent and excruciatingly close in their shells of hydrogen. Their environs are rocks, matte or shining; either way, they are all the same size and shape: perfectly round and as tall as their waists.

Kirk turns without any comment and begins to walk away, his head moving in even sweeps back and forth across the equatorial line. Spock watches him, the familiar tug of blankness near his heart, and then turns on his heel, his neck swiveling in the same pattern, reassured by the even thoroughness of their search.

They both see it on the other side of the planet, on the horizon at first, glowing like a fallen star. Closer they come to it and each other. The light emitted begins to take shape and form. It is a smaller rock than the rest, shaped strangely, and it is not until Spock is close enough to touch it that he discerns its silhouette: a cat, seated and staring north, its eyes hollow and open wide.

"It doesn't look like Atom," says Kirk slowly.

"We will touch it on three," says Spock, reaching out his hand. His fingers tingle as they near the rock's surface. "One. Two. Three—"

If they had a door Spock would slam it shut and lock it and push furniture against the back of it because he is not going to be interrupted. Instead he shoves Kirk—or maybe Kirk shoves him—onto the bed. They fall and bounce together and the inches separating them are cold and hollow, and Spock grabs at Kirk, grabs at Kirk's frustrating, maddening mouth with his teeth, his horribly perfect hair with his hands, his ridiculously muscled legs with his thighs, and the cold abates some, and the hollow ceases to resonate as sadly, but the echoes and the chills still hide in the ether, just out of sight.

This is what they have been missing—awareness, emotion, passion, love; and now it has been heaped on them, months and years of it, so heavy that it is crushing their hearts and lungs, and it's an awkward, miraculous jumble of mortal flesh that they crave and receive. It's give and take and inequality, and Spock can't stand not having every inch of his skin pressed against Kirk's, but neither of them can bend like that, and the lack is—it's not frustrating, it's not even maddening. It is simply unbearable and Spock wants to invent or become or—he can't. He just can't. He needs, he has to have, he cannot, but he must, and oh, oh, this, this.

He grabs Kirk everywhere. He is remembering seeing Kirk after they'd touched the rock—seeing him for the first time, seeing the curve of his lips and the scar on his cheek and the thickness around his stomach. Seeing his eyes that were so blue, a million times bluer than the sky in the reality of the street, so blue that blue itself had to come from there. He cannot see Kirk now. He can only see his own passion like the fire that burnt up the library at Alexandria. It doesn't matter. Kirk can't see him anymore either. It's not perfect. They're too selfish. But it's there, it's burning, it's something inside them other than the chasm.

They are all skin and work, they establish rhythm, they gasp, they command, they shiver and shudder and sigh and shout, and they never blink—they close their eyes tight and hard, or they keep them wide open. They are reaching climax soon and Spock is beginning to feel it in his spine and in his muscles and in his teeth and in his toenails and in his hair and in the tips of his fingers and he knows where to go and what to do and when everything locks into place, the lights flash on, billion-watt bulbs roaring to life with a brightness that douses every cell in his body. He burns in that place for as long as he can balance there, scrambling amongst the beams and trying to hold onto them, but they burn too hot in his grasp: it is never to be, and even in the middle he regrets the end.

At that end he scrapes against the wall and feels a sliver of it detach and float into the air, and he reaches out and catches it, and he's falling and doesn't know what to do with it, so he stuffs it into his mouth, and it tastes like what he's leaving, and he's confused for a long time because it also tastes like how pine trees look at night, framed against a dark blue sky, and the color of the sunset over a foggy city, and a dark island in the middle of a mountain stream.

Kirk, with his usual gift for understatement, eventually rolls off of Spock and says, "That was great."

Spock hits him.

Kirk starts laughing within the hour and Spock starts calling him illogical and they even hold hands and already everything feels better.

They still have "absolutely zero percent idea of what the fuck is going the fuck on," as Kirk eloquently puts it, but Spock—well, he's not smiling, but he's in love with Kirk again, and Kirk's in love with him, and there's no more of that strange sense of missing something.

Also, they can talk easily, without strange roadblocks popping up in their minds and steering them away from certain topics, such as:

"Why hasn't Atom blinked for, like, days now?" says Kirk. He's on his stomach in the main room, petting Atom, who is sitting like the statue was, though with her eyes fixed on Kirk.

"I have been considering that," says Spock, taking a seat, Indian-style, next to Kirk on the floor, and trying not to get too distracted by Kirk's everything. "I think that Atom is not a simple creation of yours."

"Wow, you think?" says Kirk, rolling his eyes. "Way to go, Sherlock."

Spock grits his teeth and snaps, "Do you have anything constructive to add, James?"

"You only call me James when you're seriously pissed," Kirk laughs. Spock sharpens his glare. "I'm sorry. I just—it's really great having myself back, you know? And having you back."

Spock softens. "I understand, Jim." He strokes Atom's back. Atom stretches, her little claws popping out of her toes and back in. "I think that our emotions and cares were taken in order to make it harder for us to find a way out of whatever-this-is that we are in."

Kirk nods. "I think so too. And they, or it, or something, must have stolen our memories as well. Maybe to remove any sense of urgency we would feel for returning."

"Indeed," says Spock. "Perhaps we have left something important behind." He sighs. "I have no memory of where I come from, what made me—what I did. It must have been scientific, considering the knowledge I have, and must have involved space travel."

"My knowledge is lots of strategy and, yeah, space travel, and, um… well, evidently I'm sort of a slut." Kirk smiles, his eyelids flittering. "I kind of know everything about anatomy, human and alien."

"And we were together, before this," says Spock. "I know because I am very much aware of the physical capabilities of your body."

They stare at each other for a second and then go have sex again.

After the third day of having their personalities back, they have to have a serious discussion about how they should be working more and sexing less. Atom stares at them creepily a lot, which helps a little, but Spock can't stop being happy that he's happy again. Occasionally he worries about what it meant that he sat for forty-seven days on an empty road. But the entire situation is so strange that it's hard to assign specific concerns, so mostly Kirk promises not to send Spock there again and Spock tries not to think about it, since there's nothing to be learned from the experience.

They test Kirk's powers some more and eventually come up with a working theory. The gunmetal room, the place they're in now, is, as they've established, more real than any other reality they can locate. There are numerous lesser realities: Kirk, somehow, has a channel-changer in his head, and he can glimpse bits of those realities. There are about twenty that he can flicker through, and they get strange names from the strange glimpses: the reality with the young bamboo shoots, the reality with the orange mirrors, the reality with the lemon trees. Spock can take them safely to each reality by searching for bits of code hidden in coils, saved under keywords. Each reality comes to have a real name, the name of the coil: the reality with the tiny planet is MORTAL, the reality of the street is PERPETUUM. A reality called LOAM, filled with young bamboo shoots and steaming jungle, repeats like MORTAL does. LOAM seems pleasant at first, but it quickly becomes strange to pass the same stand of trees every time, and see the same perfect beam of sunlight falling onto a moss-covered stone. And there is a humming that began when they first arrived and that grows slowly louder, until it worries them enough to leave. SCALE, the reality with orange mirrors, is a labyrinth, and they see the chasm in reflections and leave quickly, because it is a confusing place and they could stumble across the chasm unexpectedly, which they do not want to do. CAUSA, the reality with the lemon trees, does not seem to repeat—that is, they cannot see any pattern in the lemon trees, but neither can they find an end to them.

They are walking through ATAXIA when Spock's eyelashes begin to hurt again. He throws out his arm to stop Kirk, who is about to step forward.

ATAXIA is large and curved upwards; it is the interior of a world, and it is just vast enough to contain clouds in the center of it. Spock can move them around in ATAXIA with the PADD he got Kirk to make him, but they really have to do thorough exploration on foot. ATAXIA is mainly purple and blue. It seems like a cold rainforest, but sparse, and with short, violet trees that drip a lot and have very thick lea—

Kirk starts laughing.

"Jim," snaps Spock, "we know nothing about the stimulus it receives, you mustn't provoke—"

This is raw laughter. This is laughter where great, gasping breaths are drawn between gales of it. Spock bends over with Kirk. There is green flushing in Spock's cheeks and on his neck and his eyelashes ache more, more, and he can feel a chill crawling up his spine, and he doesn't have to turn around to know that the chasm is moving again.

"We have to move," says Spock. He grabs Kirk's arms and pulls and it is so strange, because he feels like he's moving two miles an hour, even though Kirk is cooperating as best he can, so they're running fast, not crawling slow, all sensory evidence to the contrary—

In moments of panic, Spock does not. A Vulcan is better than anything for crises. Spock notes empirically that he is worried and afraid and frustrated and still, still moving much too slowly, but none of it hinders him. The forefront of his mind is clear as the shallow sea.

The way Spock has set up the program that gets them to other realities means that they have to be in a certain place before they transport back. Fumbling for his PADD, Spock gets hit in the face by a purple tree branch and nearly falls over. He does drop Kirk, who is still heaving with laughter.

There is ice on his back.

A clear-headed Vulcan he may be, Spock has a human side. When he drops down to pull Kirk up, he looks back.

There are sharp, black teeth in his vision, nearly filling it, and the black of the chasm does fill it, and there is a smell like all of the smells in the world were burnt up by sulfur and flame. Spock, his own guardian angel, squeezes Kirk's wrist tight with one hand, and with a finger of the other, presses the totally untested and probably unstable emergency execute command on his PADD.

His heels are frostbitten.

Kirk stopped laughing after nearly an hour and fell asleep. Spock looks around, but Kirk never made a medical tricorder, so Spock can only rely on his emergency first aid experience and hope that Kirk will recover with sufficient sleep.

He sits down on the couch and pulls off his boots. The backs of them crumble in his hands. Spock bites his lip as he looks at his flesh. It is shining and bubbling, and Spock thinks back to what he knows about frostbite. The blisters don't appear for days. The chasm must have sped up the process. So no wonder his heels throb, like a headache broods and pulses in one off-center lobe of your brain.

After a while, Kirk wakes up.

There's still not a lot to go on.

"The problem is," says Kirk, rubbing his head, which he says hurts a little, but otherwise he's fine, "that there's no data. Just zeroes. And this is the best equipment I can summon."

Spock has come up with plenty of designs for better computers, better processors, better machines, but Kirk can't bring them into being. There is evidently a limit on what Kirk can summon. No star ships—they've tried that, and Kirk can't so much as summon dilithium, or a warp core. Nothing advanced enough to really help them.

"Why," says Spock, "does it let us travel around the realities? If it can limit what we do?"

"Maybe it can't reach us here," says Kirk. "We know more about the other realities than this place." He waves his hand at the walls of the gunmetal room. "Like I said, I don't know what this place is made of. I know we've got air and light, and we can create nourishment, but all of the equipment claims that these walls, this floor, this ceiling—don't exist."

"Then they do not exist," says Spock.

"But clearly they do," says Kirk, raising his eyebrows at Spock like Spock is slow. "I mean. You can feel them. Lean up against them. Fire phasers at them."

"You have tried that, then?" says Spock.

"Antimatter cannons, plasma bolts, sonic grenades, disruptors, lasers, magnetic charges—you name it, I've fired it at the wall," says Kirk. "I tried to cut through with a diamond saw. Nothing. If diamond can't cut through it, it can't be cut through."

Spock gets a distant expression on his face.

"Are you fantasizing about the scientific possibilities of something harder than diamond?" says Kirk, amused. "You are. It's like watching you masturbate."

"I do not—" Spock begins, irritated.

"I know." Kirk winks. Spock hesitates.

They have to take a break at that point. An hour or so later, Spock comes running out of the bedroom, clad only in pants. He taps hurriedly at some of the computers, and then turns to Kirk, who has followed him out, bemused. Spock is nearly smiling.

"Would you care to hear my idea?" he says.

A few minutes later, when Spock has explained everything, Kirk has an expression like Spock just killed his puppy. "That's your idea?" Kirk says. "I thought—I mean, sex is supposed to be inspirational—in a good way! This is terrible!"

It takes most of Spock's patience to not say anything. He just crosses his arms over his chest and stares at Kirk.

"I mean, it's like one of my ideas," says Kirk, beginning to pace. Atom winds herself around Kirk's ankles a few times and he almost trips, so she goes over to sit in Spock's lap. "It's risky, it's idiotic, it's unnecessarily dangerous, it's last-ditch…"

Spock waits.

Kirk sighs. "It's brilliant."

"That is not true," says Spock. "It is incredibly simple. And, as you say, idiotic. However, I believe that it is our best hope."

Kirk shrugs. "Well. Everything to lose. Let's do it."

Spock finds the chasm in a reality that Kirk can't access in his head. He runs the data he gets about the reality, called MALLORY. The name is appropriate: the reality, according to the imaging system, is a vast mountain range similar to the Himalayas.

The idea, obviously, is to go into the chasm. However, in MALLORY, Spock finds something he did not expect, and their plans change.

"Oh, cool," says Kirk, staring at the datastats. "Look, the highest peak is 30,554 feet, that's not much higher than Everest. And there's even a K2 lookalike, at 27,980."

Spock glances at the important bit. "Jim, the memories are located on the peak of the tallest mountain."

"Shocked," says Kirk. "Shocked, I say. So, no chasm?"

"We will not be entering the chasm, no. And—" Spock rubs his temples. "There's more."

"Whatever-it-is made it impossible for us to transport any closer than, say, base camp?"

"Indeed. Although the limit is closer to Camp III levels, at around 25,000 feet."

"So we only have to climb 5,000 feet."

"Only."

Kirk blinks a few times, and makes an O2 unit. Spock watches hiking clothes come into existence, cold-weather gear in gold and blue. Then he has another idea, and turns to the computer.

"Never mind," he says triumphantly. "I've overridden it."

"What?" says Kirk, nonplussed.

"The limit on our transportation. We can get to the memories now, without having to hike."

Kirk stares at him.

"That was simple," says Spock, reflective. "Well, shall we go?"

Kirk keeps staring at him.

"Yes?" Spock says finally.

"I was kind of looking forward to climbing that," says Kirk, sounding a little put out. "I'm an ABO-rated climber."

"Mm," says Spock, who has no idea what that means but isn't about to say so. "Please finish creating the appropriate clothing—I notice you have stopped."

"But why?"

Spock glares at him. "Jim, we are going to be exposed on the top of an Everest-like mountain for at least long enough to reclaim the memories that have been taken from us. Imagine that we are transporting into space for thirty seconds or less and consider that we will need a space suit."

"Oh. Yes."

Spock raises his brows at him. "ABO-rated?"

Kirk sighs. "Well, it's been a while."

The transition is the strangest yet. One second they are standing in a 22 degree room. The next second, it's nearly 60 below, dark as a cave, and the wind is trying to eat them alive.

Spock and Kirk drop immediately, digging their hooks and crampons into the bitter snow. Even with a snowsuit to rival spacesuits, it's hard to see. The O2 units blow strange-smelling air straight into their nostrils, and Spock wrinkles his nose.

The top of the mountain looks like all of the pictures of the summit of Everest that they've ever seen. It's surprisingly wide, with slopes that dip into death, black rocks further down like claws, and endless, vertical expanses of snow. A vista of other mountains pours out from the clouds, and the view is gorgeous and breathtaking and awe-inspiring and they really don't have time for it. They turn towards each other and see it.

On the very middle of the summit plateau, there is a cat, sitting there, licking its paw, completely unaffected by the wind.

Atom.

"Oh my fucking God," says Kirk, his jaw so wide open it looks dislocated. Spock can't move.

Atom puts her paw down on the snow and looks back and forth between them. Spock realizes that he actually can't move because if he does, the wind will peel him off of the mountain and fling him into the sky and he'll freeze to death and he may be panicking a little but that's because what?

"This may have been unnecessary," says Atom. She has a voice like windchimes.

"What the fuck?" says Kirk, voice rising rapidly in pitch. "What the fuck?"

Spock shakes his head a bit. Maybe this is a dream. Maybe it'll go away soon.

"I was trying to prove a point about overlooking that which is in front of your very eyes," Atom continues. "It may have been cruel. Additionally, she is coming, and the wind is too strong for you to access your terminal." She tilts her head to the side. "Luckily, I feel quite bad about all of this. And so we will be going now."

She blinks and the reality disappears.

Kirk says "What the fuck?" a couple of more times when they get back. Spock goes straight to the terminal and establishes that the chasm was indeed approaching them once more, and that Atom is, indeed, their memories. Atom is also, as far as Spock can tell, the room itself. At least, that's what the readings say.

"I am sorry," says Atom. "I did not think—we did not think…"

"We?" Kirk can't help but shriek. "Who is we?"

"Worry not, the 'we' is metaphorical," says Atom reassuringly. "I will restore your memories to you now."

When Spock wakes up (he does not even remember going to sleep), Atom is laying on his chest, purring heavily. Her little white ears flick forward, and she opens her mouth to yawn. Her teeth are like needles.

The memories sit like cotton balls around his ears. They do not crowd his mind; they present themselves quickly and efficiently, like courtiers to the king.

"The captain is not yet awake," says Atom. "Are your memories restored?"

Spock sees: Temporal disturbances. Sensor readings off the charts. A fast-approaching storm.

"Yes," says Spock. "Yes, they are.

"We have to get back," is the first thing he says to Kirk. Kirk groans a little and tries to sit up. Atom comes over and licks his hand. Her pink tongue is tiny and delicate.

"Of course we do," snaps Kirk, levering himself into a sitting position. "Oh, Jesus. My head hurts."

"I am sorry," says Atom sympathetically. "I did not realize that Vulcan and Terran brains were different until I had already returned the memories. I can provide some metoclopromide hydrochloride, if you wish."

"No thanks, I—what?" Kirk shakes his head, then flinches and holds it delicately, then says, "Never mind," in a tight voice. "Spock, when you say we have to—oh my God." He scrambles to his feet, wild-eyed. "Spock! We have to get back!"

Spock tries not to kill him. "Jim. I will hurt you."

"The chasm!" Kirk yells. "It's—the cloud—it'll destroy the Enterprise! This is bad! This is so bad!"

"There is nothing to be gained by panicking," says Spock sternly. "Judicious hurry, however, is more productive." Spock turns to Atom. "What do you know?"

Atom shrugs as only a cat can. "I know that you came to this place, and I found your memories, so I took them in."

"That's it? What brought us here?" Kirk demands.

"I assume the chasm did," says Atom. She holds up a slight paw to stem the tide of their questions; a disturbingly human gesture. "I know no more. I am the denizen of this reality. I have never been menaced by the chasm. I have heard of it: another group of explorers who passed through here called it the 'Un'kan,' the 'devil' in your language. It is also the Meden, Al-hal-gadah, and Nothing."

"How did it put us here?" Spock asks.

"I have no idea," says Atom.

Spock and Kirk spend hours, if not days, working harder and harder at the machines, and they find out nothing.

"Maybe we just have to go back to it," says Kirk. He is lying on the floor, shooting a phaser at the ceiling. Spock is still typing. "Maybe it ate us once, and we have to let it eat us again."

"It does not eat," says Spock irritably. "It is Nothing. Nothing cannot eat."

"That's a double negative."

Spock gives him a Look.

"Okay, fine," Kirk says, and wavers, and disappears.

Atom's ear twitches, but she hasn't blinked.

Spock tries not to do or think anything rash. He types numbers into the computer and comes up with answers, somewhat to his surprise. He knows exactly where Kirk has gone to: the place with the street, and the white houses.

He runs back to the program that will take him between realities and tries to execute it and cannot: an error message appears that he cannot get rid of. And then the machines stop working entirely. The screen flickers and goes blank, and smoke comes out of the back of one of the computers, and when he touches his PADD, it disintegrates.

Everything is like that. The very clothes Spock is wearing crumble to dust. The rooms are disappearing, each object vanishing in a second, or after a long time of fading, or after becoming ash. Atom picks her white way across the debris forming and vanishing, and comes to sit by Spock's ankle.

Finally the room is back to the size it was at the beginning, and only Spock's uniform, dusty in the seat, is left. He puts it on quickly.

"Atom, can you take me to the place where Jim is?" he says.

Atom tilts her head to one side. "It is dangerous for me to leave this place."

"It is dangerous for me, also," says Spock. "But I must—" He stops to breathe. "There is nothing else to be done here."

"Not for you," says Atom. "Plenty for me."

"If you can remake those machines—"

"I cannot," says Atom. "I paid no attention to them when they were here, so I could not recreate them. Nor do I have interest in doing so."

"You must take me," says Spock.

"Why?" says Atom.

"Because I am nothing without him," says Spock.

"He may well be Nothing without you," says Atom. "Please pick me up."

Spock does so, and an ache begins in his eyelashes. Curled safely in his hot arms, Atom blinks.

The air is roaring. Spock feels Atom go stiff, and her claws cut into his arm. He stumbles backwards, shoved by the wind, and nearly drops Atom, but instinctively he clutches her to him, and her claws go in deeper.

The white houses are barely visible in the sandstorm. Spock finds that he has no trouble breathing—there is a thin layer of sandless air between him and the storm, although the wind certainly makes it through. Atom yowls, the first cat sound he has heard from her other than a purr. "Let me down!" she shrieks through the wind. She has retracted her claws.

"But—"

"I must resume my true form! Let me down!"

Spock drops her and she lands on her side, eyes frozen wide open. For a moment she does not move and he is afraid that he has somehow broken her, but then her shape begins to twist and grow, and in a second she is as tall as his shoulders, a glowing white beast with brown pits for eyes. Her claws and jaw are golden.

"Follow me!" says Atom, striding forwards. Spock tries but he cannot move through the wind, and he yells. Atom does not look back. She extends her tail like a whip, and it lands in his hands. He holds it tight and she tows him forward.

Abruptly, the sand clears, and the wind dies. Spock looks back, blinking; the storm stretches like a wall behind them, straight up into the atmosphere. At his feet are the cobbles of the street, pale and sand and dust and brown-pink. And before him is the chasm, in its true form: coiled and small, the size and shape of Atom, but black, with deep blue eyes. The chasm is crouching, her silver maw hanging open, her silver claws holding Kirk's body tightly.

Spock tries to run forwards but Atom's tail wraps around him tightly, restricting his movement. Spock can tell by the set of her back that she is surprised and wary, but it is all distant: Kirk is not moving, and nothing else matters.

"Did you kill him?" Atom asks sharply.

"No," says the chasm. Her voice is like acid melting on wallpaper. "He thinks I put him here. He was going to hurt me. I was trying to get him until I realized he could hurt me. He holds our memories."

"He was going to hurt you?" says Atom. "He holds—our memories?"

Somehow, the chasm looks confused. "Yes," she says, like that is obvious. "He's light. He hurts me. And you—can you—can you not see the memories? I have released them, just now…."

Atom does not move for a very long time. Spock stares hard at Kirk's chest and he thinks he sees it move, but maybe he's imagining it. Finally she says, "Verse?"

The chasm looks satisfied.

"I am Atom," Atom says slowly. "Verse, it is I."

Ripples move across Verse's surface. "Atom."

"I have searched for you," says Atom. "Verse, I have searched for you everywhere, and you—your form—"

"I'm older now, this is how we look when we get older," says Verse. "You, Spock—what has happened to this human?"

Atom lets Spock go and Spock runs. He drops painfully to his knees at Kirk's side, and his heels hurt very badly. Verse is the chasm, he knows, because he got the frostbite from this. But Verse has silver teeth now, where before those teeth were black. He does not know what it means but he does not care, because Kirk—

Kirk is breathing. Shallow. He is pale. Veins in his eyelids, standing like the Nile against the desert.

Spock touches Kirk's pulse (faint), Kirk's arm (cold). "Did you touch him?" he demands of Verse.

"Of course—I had to fend him off," says Verse. "And I had to get the memories. It was difficult…"

"You cannot touch us," says Spock, slightly hysterical. "It hurts us. He is, there is something wrong; you have to help—"

"Oh, then let me return you to where you came from," says Verse. She blinks her cold blue eyes and there is the familiar feel of transition, the summer warmth of a transporter beam—but different, because the sparks of ice in the beam are like those that bit at Spock's heels, and then from the middle it all crumbles into diamonds.

He knows before he wakes up that he is in sickbay: the hospital smell is distinct. When he opens his eyes and sees Bones scowling over him, he says, "I have never been and shall never be happier to see you, Doctor McCoy."

"Shut your trap," says Bones, almost fondly. "Jim's alive, thought you'd like to know."

"Oh," says Spock, feeling a kind of thick, warm stupidity spread through his body; it's relief, or love, or both.

"So, where have you been? You showed up in the transporter room. Weren't even beamed," says Bones, sounding like he could care less. Spock may be mistaken, but he thinks he hears a very slight undercurrent of concern.

"We were…" Spock struggles. He has no idea how to phrase any of this. "Elsewhere. How is the ship?"

"Oh, just fine," says Bones. "Uhura—Acting Captain Uhura, that is—gotta be careful, she's already hit Scotty over the head with a PADD… well, he deserved it—she's been on the warpath to get y'all back. Scotty's still tryin' to repair the warp drive. When isn't he? But I think he's close."

"Repair the warp drive?" says Spock.

Bones looks at him strangely. "You were there for that," he says. "After the antimatter beam passed through the ship—you know, the usual. Temporal disturbances. Sensor readings off the charts."

"A fast-approaching storm," says Spock slowly. "But—after?"

"Well, that's the thing," says Bones. "Then we went into an ion storm, and you two disappeared."

Ion storms are the unknown error behind all of the frustrating error messages in the universe. They are random, comprehensively troublesome, and completely unpredictable.

Spock sits at his computer station and thinks about all the questions that haven't been answered and it is like an itch inside of his brain. He cannot scratch it and he does not want to scratch it but it still itches.

He thinks about how none of it went right, but how none of it went wrong; how all of it could have gone more smoothly and how all of it could have been much bumpier. He thinks about the moment in sickbay after he touched Kirk, after Kirk opened his eyes, after they spoke: in the middle of the conversation it struck Spock that he was weak-kneed and he sat on Kirk's bed, and Kirk put his hand on Spock's hand, and smiled, and blinked his blue eyes, and Spock brushed his hand over his own eyes because his eyelashes did not hurt, and this was not over, not if this was life. This was the flesh of it, the sweet inner core, the middle; the good feeling that crawls up your legs as you rest with your love by a fire.