Nice to see you again, you good looking group of readers you. Have another chapter! This one is from Spock Prime's POV.

No, they're not my babies. If they were the subtext would be even less sub XD

Enjoy!


Chapter Two: An Object Most Dear

I sat in Meditative silence at the edge of my bed in the temporary guest quarters to which I had been assigned. It was a strange sensation to be aboard the Enterprise after all these years, to feel the hum of the warp engines and hear the soft murmur of nearly 500 crewmembers and passengers moving about their lives drifting through the vastness of space. Strange and admittedly emotional.

The chime of the door drew my attention, and I gave a curious "yes?" Who would be calling upon me at this hour? Logically I could only assume it would be Jim or...

"It is me," my own young voice called from the conn, and although I felt a twinge of confusion and slight apprehension I replied, "Come," eyes closed and fingertips pressed together to maintain all composure.

His soft footfalls entered the room and paused as he realized with what I had been occupied before his arrival.

"I apologize, I did not intend to interrupt you in meditation. I will return at a more convenient time," he said quickly, and I opened my eyes to see my younger self holding his body self-consciously, not comfortable in the slightest in the situation he had placed us in.

"It is no intrusion," I assuaged, taking my pendant from the bed and draping it back around my neck. I always used it as a centering object in my meditation, and its familiar and comforting weight settled over my breastbone as he approached. I saw his questioning gaze upon it, and I indicated that he should sit beside me. He remained standing.

"I came here to apologize for my irrational, rude and inexcusable behavior. I was acting out of..." he paused, as if the admission was quite difficult for him. It probably was. I remembered the time in my life when being Vulcan-and therefore, not human-was of the utmost importance to me. He clung to the remnants of our shattered culture, and for that I could not blame him.

"Jealously," he finally finished, and I smiled slightly.

"There is nothing shameful in actions of protectiveness or possessiveness in regards to one we care for. I took no offense from your behavior," I assured, and he relaxed minutely in relief. It would be a logical assumption that Jim had insisted he apologize, and having completed this objective he looked around my room silently, at a loss for continued interaction.

"Ambassador..." he began eventually, surprising me with his initiation of conversation, and I raised an eyebrow to indicate he should continue and I would endeavour to answer to the fullest of my ability. He folded his arms at the small of his back, a familiar gesture I often employed when attempting to organize chaos within myself.

"May I pose a personal inquiry?" he prompted, and I set a hand on the bed again to encourage him to sit beside me. The disparate positions we currently inhabited suggested a balance of power in his favor, which may have made him comfortable but was not conducive to sincere conversation.

"I will answer as fully as I am able without posing any risk to your future," I teased, and he finally complied with my request for a more personable seating arrangement. He situated himself stiffly, and I could not suppress the immense fondness I felt for this young Vulcan I remembered being, still uncomfortable in his half-human skin.

"In your past...you seem fond of Jim, and to understand my own affection for him. What was your relationship with...your Jim? That is, the Jim you knew?" he asked, forming each word carefully as he picked around what he felt was a delicate subject. I lifted a hand to the object around my neck, a habit born of nearly a century of fond thoughts of Jim, and his eyes followed my motion again. I could tell he wished very much for me to share information about it but was too polite to ask outright, and I decided to solve two sources of his curiosity with one action-as Doctor McCoy would have put it, to kill two birds with one stone.

I placed the amulet on the pressed coverlet between us, flicking the well worn activation switch. A blue image flickered to life, a tiny figure I had imprinted in my mind; a man in his forties with a wry smirk, arms folded across his chest, a dozen tiny lines crinkling around the corners of his eyes. He began to sing, sending my companion's eyebrows up to his hairline in surprise. Whatever he had expected, I felt certain it did not resemble the reality.

"Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you! I know, I know, it's illogical to celebrate something you had nothing to do with, but I haven't had the chance to congratulate you on your appointment to the ambassadorship so I thought I'd seize the occasion..."

His eyes were fixed intently on this man he vaguely recognized and I remembered so strikingly well, and I recognized a glimmer of wonder in his eyes. Jim, at this age, still knew us. Still cared for us. He would likely find that idea appealing.

"Bravo, Spock-they tell me your first mission may take you away for a while, so I'll be the first to wish you luck, and to say..."

Jim always had trouble finishing this sentence. I knew what that silence held-to say goodbye, to say good luck, to say I hate you for leaving Starfleet without asking my opinion, to say be careful, to say come home soon, to say all the things we had ever uttered to one another and all the things we couldn't-and I saw Spock still noticeably, holding his breath.

To say what?

"I miss you, old friend." It flickered once fitfully before falling dark and silent. I replaced the pendant around my neck with all the care afforded a sacred object, and he looked to me in slight bewilderment.

"That," I explained softly, "was the last message ever passed between Jim and I."

He contemplated this enormous fact for a moment, hands folded in his lap.

"You were friends," he deduced, and I gave a soft sigh.

"I can only assume the purpose of your line of questioning is to verify your uncertainties regarding your own relationship with Jim," I postulated, and the tips of his ears darkened slightly in embarrassment before he nodded slightly. This gave me a small surge of happiness-for them to be emotionally involved this early in their timeline meant several years together which I was never offered, years before I ever met my Jim. That was a precious thing, but not necessarily a singularly positive one.

"And what is the nature of your relationship with Jim?" I urged, and he colored more noticeably. This unstable youth was more easily flustered than I remembered being-perhaps a side effect of elongated exposure to Jim in his developmental years of command.

"We are...very close," he struggled, and I extended my hand, three fingers offered in aid. He seemed alarmed by the concept of a mind meld with me, but realized it would be beneficial and relaxed.

"If you would have no objection, I will share some of my own thoughts with you as well," I suggested, and he nodded.

Our eyes closed, and I murmured, "My mind to your mind...my thoughts to your thoughts."

Brilliant.

"How the hell did that kid beat your test?"

Sparkling eyes, defiance, impossible, incredible

Who is he?

"I do not know."

Eyes flash, crystal blue, accusation, conflict. An uncomfortable magnetism. You should not feel these things. They are dark and angry and you know better.

"The purpose is to experience fear."

What do you know of Fear, Spock? This is fear. Pain and anguish Vulcan is dead gone just like that fear hatred sorrow rage Mother and those damnable blue eyes, insubordinate, challenging, pressing all the wrong sore spots of your psyche until you break.

He's always known how to get to us.

A decision, impossible, wrong Get him off my ship you can't handle feeling this many things and he makes it worse, so much worse, so confusing.

He returns, a demonic boomerang, chin out, shoulders back, those eyes those ponfo mirann eyes glittering as he hits you where it hurts, draws your deepest most private emotions roaring to the surface. He makes you hate him.

You tumble together through space, set on a collision course with destiny, and he pulls you in a way you cannot explain.

"Just trust me."

And you do. You trust him to the ends of the galaxy and beyond, an emotion which transcends logic. Even when he drives you mad, even when he pulls you to heights of emotion you could never have imagined or draws you to depths of anger and frustration you would rather not have ever felt, you trust him.

Then suddenly he is dying, burning from the inside out, dying to save you and your crew and everything you believe in.

You have felt such pain and loss and crushing devastation only once before in your life upon the death of our planet. This is your Va'Pak, your own immeasurable loss, the shattering of the world you have built for yourself in absence of that which we lost.

You stand at his bedside, tense, more nervous than you've felt in years, and you cannot explain nor justify the soaring burst of joy you feel as those eyes-demanding, brilliant, brave, beautiful-open after you believed they would never do so again.

.

The flow of images slows, halts, before reversing quickly. I find censoring my end of the connection most challenging, and cannot stop most of the trade.

.

A lingering gaze, warm eyes, touches that at first were startling but become common; welcome even.

"Spock!"

Heart thundering escapades, narrow escapes, daring feats of human illogic and valiance. He never has had much respect for my limitations. Or his own, for that matter.

My first Pon Farr away from home, risking his life, he'd do anything to save me.

And he does, dozens of times over, my life in his hands and his in mine, "Captain. Even when he doesn't say it he does."

I spent so many years trying to suppress these traitorous emotions, yet he pulled those slight smiles, accepted touches, unimaginable feelings from me with apparent ease. What beings were we, brilliant and strange and endless bursts of light in the darkness of space.

"And where would you say we belong?"

"You? At his side, as if you've always been there and always will."

A parting, painful, anguished, unwilling, but necessary. Purge these shameful feelings from myself before they can poison anything else. Kolinar looming, offering peace and freedom. Freedom from him. Is that what I wanted?

Of course not. It was not weakness which called me to his side once more-it was strength. He called to me from Space, drawing me with my conflict and desire for something more, something meaningful, to him once more.

"Even this simple feeling is beyond VGER's comprehension."

Clapsed hands, yes, I knew what that meant, meant to me and to him, knew I had found where I belonged now and always.

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."

Or the one dying slowly, painfully, separated by a pane of treacherous glass, unable to touch him, unable to say goodbye.

"Live Long and Prosper."

Death, which I do not remember, and rebirth which I find difficult to recall, just that thin golden tether linking us together. I wonder if he felt it break.

"Jim. Your name is Jim."

Jubilation, reunion, joy unlike anything that should have been possible-

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you.

Pain, sudden and crippling, the breaking of thread across thousands of light years.

I Miss you Old Friend.

Loss so staggering I had nothing then to compare it to and no method for combatting it.

I have been and always will be your friend.

Falling, tumbling through space and time, hurtling across galaxies and years and impossibilities.

Bright eyes, upturned face, youth and vitality glowing gold, was he always so beautiful?

"James T. Kirk."

He's taken care of, you'll see to him. Keep him safe, keep him well, tell him what I did not have the strength to.

I love you.

We broke apart, slightly staggered by the enormity of a shared recollection of Jim Kirk.

"How...did he die?" he asked, struggling for air and reeling from the lingering sense of loss which I had dealt with every day for nearly a century. I shook my head.

"It would be dangerous to..." I trailed off because the look in his eyes-devastation, coupled with the determination and realization that he would outlive our beloved by centuries and that every moment he had with him was precious-stunned me into silence. I could not condemn him to the same fate I had suffered.

"During my first mission as Ambassador. He was killed in an unfortunate accident aboard the Enterprise B on her Maiden Voyage. It is my hope that you will not allow him-"

"I will not," he interrupted sharply, and I nodded. He understood. I could only hope that he would succeed where I ultimately failed.

"I must return to my duties," he said tightly, rising with uncharacteristic speed, and I gestured to the door to indicate that he was free to leave at any time with no offense to me. He strode to the door without another word, and I felt solid determination in our lingering connection.

He was going to see Jim.

I settled back into the blankets then, allowing the trinket to play audio only as I closed my eyes and smiled.

"Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you..."


I know I could face

The bitter cold

But life without you

I don't know