The Button

by Angel Baby1

In a life tainted by magic and evil, Jim makes his way from a young age as the apprentice of a powerful medium and her monster slayer husband. Eventually, the stars call to him, whispering of an unnatural enemy. Something will have to be done about that. Something will also have to be done about the stubborn Vulcan who thinks one shared childhood adventure makes them friends.

2. The Apprentice

...sssssooooooo.

I got nothing. I'm just a huge loser. Thanks be to NaNoWriMo for giving me the opportunity to flake on my original work by writing this instead! The procrastination from my procrastination is my friend.

Or.

...Yeah.

Next up: The Bones chapter! Which shouldn't be this long. But then THIS wasn't supposed to be this long. Someday I'll learn how to shut up.

But it is not this day.

11/27/16 UPDATE Edited the last of the Spock part to make leaving Sarek's fault. I wanted Spock to make a miscalculation but it didn't work, he ended up just being kind of stupid? General grammar tweaks as well.

---

The Apprentice

---

Spock sat staring at the apple for a long, incredulous moment. Instinct flooded in before logic: he ran for cover. Well.

Hopped.

Once he was safe under the buffet table, he settled his…feet…, shut his eyes, and attempted to center himself through the discipline of meditation.

Surely there had been a hallucinogenic added to the apple. His mother had warned him about the propensity for unscrupulous humans to drug unwatched drinks. Perhaps that extended to fruit as well.

The apple came from the lunch his mother had packed for him though. When would the perpetrator have had the time, or opportunity, to switch it for a tainted lookalike?

A door at the far end of the banquet hall opened. Spock held his breath, hoping to avoid detection while in his compromised state.

"Aw, nuts," an adolescent male voice complained. "Nobody's even in here yet."

"I told you," a female voice, somehow smaller than the male's, replied with derision. "Dinner isn't scheduled until 6. People won't start showing up until 5:15, minimum. We need to keep looking."

"Yeah but that's— Hey, is that an apple?"

Spock shuffled back, further under the table. Large feet approached the apple, followed by an even larger body crouching by it. The being made no attempt to touch the apple.

"Huh," the male voice continued. "Poison, I see, hath been his timeless—"

"Not that again," the female interrupted. "So it's a poison apple. So what? Nobody's around, which means nobody ate it, which means it's not our problem."

The figure stood, tapping the toe of one sneaker against the apple so it would roll, revealing the bite mark Spock had left.

Four small black paws trotted up to the apple, accompanied by the female voice sighing. "Fine," she grumbled. "Let's find the victim and get this over with." The voice belonged to a cat, who dropped her nose to the ground to snuffle over the apple and then down along Spock's path. "I still think this isn't our job though," she said under her breath.

Or rather, she seemed to say, as a result of the drugged apple. Because Terran felines lacked the ability to talk. They had neither the physiological nor, specifically, neurological capabilities.

The cat found him, poking her small pink nose under the tablecloth obscuring Spock's location before shaking her head to push all the way under. Her eyes zeroed in on him. "Guess," she called back to her companion.

"Not a tough one. Frog, for sure. This is a pretty basic spell."

The cat crawled under the table to sit, tail curled around her forepaws, and look down at him. "Not very brave," she sniffed, "are you? You get turned into a frog and the first thing you do is hide away?"

"That's not fair," the male said with reproach. "When's the last time you got turned into a small prey animal?"

"Never," she quipped back. "I'm too smart for it."

The male knelt, bending forward so he could lift the edge of the tablecloth and peek under. He smiled, eyes warm and mismatched, one blue like the sky at morning, one dark as the sea with only four pinholes of the sky spaced in an orderly pattern.

But of course, eyes were not blue like natural phenomena. And ocular defects were not patterns. Vulcans did not think in such terms, so neither did Spock.

"I'm Jim," the boy said, nodding toward the cat. "Her Highness over there is Kit. We weren't here to help you initially, but we can probably add that as a side-quest." He shifted to stretch one hand out toward Spock. "Hop on. I'll give you a lift."

The cat snickered.

"I will not fit," Spock told the boy—Jim. "While this hallucination is quite...pervasive, nevertheless, I am aware that my body as it truly is could never rest in a child's hand."

Jim rolled his eyes. "That's a pretty fancy way of having a freakout," he said. "Also, I'm not a child, I'm thirteen. You talk like you're about forty."

"Negative. I am fifteen."

"Well, then, we're contemporaries." Jim curled his fingers in and out in a beckoning gesture. "Come on, I'll help you out."

"As I have stated, I will not fit—"

"Pretend I'm part of the hallucination."

Spock considered the logic of that.

"Alternatively," the cat said, "I could swat you on the behind and your instincts will have you hopping onto his hand. Your choice."

Spock got onto Jim's hand. Then Jim stood, raising Spock up and up and up from the floor, resettling him in the cup of both palms once they were straight.

"I don't need you to believe me that this is real," Jim said, eyes level with Spock's so, presumably, they could communicate as equals. "It'd make things easier if you could pretend, though."

"I am Vulcan. Vulcans do not pretend. What is, is."

"What is," Jim said, bending to pick the apple up by its stem and deposit it in a pocket of his overlarge leather jacket, "is that you're a frog because magic enchanted apple, but you don't exactly seem keen on accepting that. I figure pretending is a safe medium until we finish our chores and get the spell broken." He blinked, then grinned down at the cat. "Heh. Medium. Get it?"

"I'll scratch you," the cat warned, tail lashing.

Spock settled his…flippers?...more comfortably on Jim's palm and thought the issue through.

If he were, in fact, somehow a frog, what would he expect? To be smaller than Jim, small enough to fit in his hands, which he was. For his senses to be collecting different information, or expected information in different ways. Also true. For new instincts, frog instincts, to hum under the unrelenting hold of his control. True.

Still true: he could imagine all those things, to some degree of success or another, which meant he could hallucinate them.

How could he falsify it?

Vulcans were touch telepaths. If he were hallucinating Jim, being in Jim's hands, he would be able to reach out for Jim's mind and find nothing there. If he were actually in Jim's hands, traces of the Terran's emotions should leak in through all the places—nearly all of Spock's frog body—they were touching.

Spock closed his eyes, focusing inward to ready himself before reaching out.

Jim's emotions sang through the bottom of his flippers and his round belly where they rested in Jim's palms, patience and amusement and a solid, steady resolve. He was partially distracted, thinking about a pair of tasks he had to accomplish on top of breaking the spell on Spock. The thoughts seemed disordered, at first glance, but there was a fascinating thread of cohesion despite the disorder. His plans fluctuated moment to moment, weighing the odds of where the person he was looking for might be against where he thought the object he'd been sent for must be, now also factoring in how to find the caster of Spock's spell.

Spock was under a spell. He'd bitten into an enchanted apple and been turned into a frog.

Magic was real.

Spock opened his eyes, shifting so he could look down at Kit sitting by Jim's ankles. "Fascinating," he said. "A speech-capable feline."

Kit bristled, tail puffing up like an electric charge had shot through her. "See?" she growled. "This is why I don't talk around strangers. This right here. That's what they always say."

"Well, technically what they say is—" Jim affected a mix of shock and horror, one thumb petting absently over Spock's head, "—'A talking cat?', so you'll admit it was a bit different this time."

"How did you know the apple was enchanted?" Spock asked Jim, ignoring the irrelevant debate.

Jim lifted one shoulder in a shrug. "Man, you work with enough witches, some stuff rubs off, y'know?"

Spock, in fact, did not know.

"Where'd you find it, anyway?" Jim asked, focusing down at Spock with his mismatched eyes. "If we can track it back to where you found it, or who gave it to you, this could end up being really easy."

"It was in my lunch," Spock explained, "packed for me by my mother."

"I don't suppose your mother's a witch?" Kit wondered hopefully.

"Are there Vulcan witches?" Jim added.

"Not to my knowledge," Spock said. "Though, at this juncture, I do not feel confident enough to reject the notion wholesale. It would seem unlikely. Regardless, my mother is not a Vulcan, though I cannot speak to her…witchiness. More to the point, I do not think she would enchant me without prior warning and consent."

Jim made a long, considering eh noise, head tilting side to side in what might be disagreement. "I mean. Sometimes adults do things for weird reasons? One of my guardians, Donna, she once had a friend put a spell on me so anything Other I touched zapped me so I'd learn to pay attention and stop, like, accidentally exorcising people's friends and relations and stuff. Took me a while to figure out, but taught me better control, which broke the spell. So if she is a witch, maybe this is a lesson?"

After a moment spent considering several lines of questions, Spock settled on, "It is not done so on Vulcan, and she has committed to raising me in the Vulcan manner. I do not think it could be her."

"You'd know best," Jim acknowledged, beginning to walk toward one of the doors leading out of the dining room with Spock in his hands and Kit trailing along beside him. "So who else could it be? Did you set your lunchbox down anywhere? Could someone have gotten to it?"

"Security is fairly tight around my family," Spock admitted.

Once Jim pushed through the door to the convention hall beyond, he switched his hold, tucking Spock into the bend of his left elbow, presumably to make him less conspicuous. "Security, huh? Are you some kind of big shot?"

"My father is the Vulcan ambassador to Earth. He is here for a meeting. Mother insisted we accompany him, wishing to see New York again as she has not visited in a number of years. We came across this convention by accident. She was fascinated by the concept and insisted I attend with her."

Jim hummed low in his chest, a noise that vibrated through Spock quite distractingly. "That's really suspicious," Jim said with a cheerful smile as he navigated their way through the crowds of convention attendees.

"Why would you think so?"

"Well, first, this isn't a convention. It's a fair. It not a ticketed event; it's ongoing. Always here, in some form or another. And nobody comes across this place, Spock. You've got to know it's here because someone in the community brought you. Your mom might not be a witch, but she's something, if she's been here enough to bring a guest. What did you say her name was?"

"I didn't," Spock reminded him. "She is Amanda Grayson."

"Hmm." Jim glanced down at Kit, who shook her head subtly. "Never heard of her," he admitted. "But that doesn't mean she's not a big deal. Some of the biggest deals are pretty unknown."

"…That does not make sense."

Jim shrugged. "Eh."

They made it to a hallway blocked off by a velvet rope. Jim ducked under it without pause, without so much as glancing around to make sure they wouldn't be caught or reported. Kit ran ahead of him, tail lashing with what looked like excitement.

"Where are we going, Jim?" Spock asked quietly.

"To collect auction winnings for my mentors," Jim said: not a satisfying explanation. "Then to try and find either your mom or a person I came here to find, whoever comes first."

"My mother said she was attending a panel on the xenobiological impact of cross-cultural contaminants."

Jim paused, then squinted down at Spock. "What kind of a convention did she tell you this was? Also, are you sure she didn't enchant the apple, 'cause that sounds kind of like a hint, in retrospect."

Spock considered for another moment. "Fairly sure," he said. "I cannot imagine what would prompt her to trick me into learning a lesson, as you described your guardians doing for you. I am Vulcan; she would have simply offered me the correction."

"Sure she would," Jim hummed, starting back down the hall.

At the end, heavy black curtains covered an ordinary doorway. Jim shouldered his way through. Spock's frog eyes adjusted well to the darkness. While Jim greeted the proprietor of the…room, Spock resettled in his hold to get a better look around.

The entire room was covered floor to ceiling, corner to corner in enormous, sturdy shelves packed tight with things Spock had never seen before and could not deduce the use of. Toward the back, a high counter stood littered with odds and ends. Its base was made of three rows of dimly lit glass cases boasting hundreds of strange artifacts. Two round tables were spaced evenly in the remaining space, each with four chairs, also cluttered with yet more items.

Kit sat by the shelves that made up the far eastern wall, looking up with singular concentration. After a second, her haunches wiggled, and she leapt straight up. She landed daintily among the assortment, weaving her way through them.

"If she knocks something down again," the proprietor began warningly.

Jim held up his free hand in a sign of harmlessness. "She knows better," he promised.

The proprietor, a human of such strict neutrality—average brown hair, skin, eyes, average height, average weight—Spock could barely imagine them between blinks, frowned. "She knew better last time too," they muttered, turning away from Jim to step behind the counter and rummage around. "I've got the Doyles' winnings right here. You'd better sign right for it or I'll come find you!"

"Won't," Jim teased while signing the proffered sheet.

The proprietor lifted one hand to waggle a scolding finger at Jim. "I'll hire one of those critters you hate, the whatddoyoucallems, and sic 'em on you, see if I don't!"

"I don't hate them," Jim said, reaching across the counter to accept the wrapped package the proprietor handed him. "I just prefer them dead to alive."

"You're being very rude," they said, shaking a finger at Jim. They used that finger to indicate Spock tucked safely in the crook of Jim's left elbow. "Aren't you going to introduce us?"

Jim laughed brightly. "And give you a new being to torment with your incessant soul-snatching and twice-weekly newsletters? Not on your life."

The proprietor pouted. "You like my newsletters."

"Because you don't want my soul," Jim agreed.

They shivered pointedly. "Not on your life. Now, we've settled with the Doyle account." They leaned against the counter with what was probably supposed to be an alluring wiggle of their eyebrows. "Is it time to finally set up an account for you?"

"This has been fun," Jim said, not looking at the proprietor as he tucked the package into the messenger bag slung across his shoulders. "But since there's nothing you can do for me—"

"Perhaps," Spock suggested, resettling his front flippers on Jim's forearm, "this individual might know—" Jim's hand closed gently over Spock's entire head to quiet him. His Terran emotions flooded through Spock, complex layers of confidence and bravado under a swell of new panic flavored with desperation. Underpinning all that was the unexpected quiet of an apex predator, still and waiting. Watching.

Hungry.

"See you next time!" Jim chirped, turning on his heel to walk calmly but firmly out the door, Kit trotting beside him with her tail raised like a flag. "Never ask that one a question you want answered," the Terran whispered to Spock once they were nearly halfway down the hall. "Not them or anything like them. The question is a contract, and the answer is acceptance. They'll answer at any cost, which is what you'll owe them in kind. We can figure out how to break your spell on our own."

"What was that creature?" Spock asked, unsettled and frustrated by it. Tendrils of his own emotions frizzled and slipped through his control, resisting a lifetime of training to slither free.

A side-effect of the enchantment? Of Jim's unfettered feelings? Of whatever it was he'd just met and been saved from?

"Naming things gives them power," Jim said, sliding around the stanchions at the end of the hallway to rejoin the crowds in the main hall. "Now, next steps: We should find your mom."

"To what end?" Spock asked, tone calm for all the irritability trying to seep through.

"It's not like we have any other leads," Kit muttered from below him. Her tail began lashing, periodically swinging over to knock against Jim's leg as he walked. "If she really didn't enchant the apple—"

"She did not."

"—she still might have seen who did. Or she might know where the apple came from, who gave it to her."

"She undoubtedly used the replicator in our quarters at the hotel."

Kit turned her head up to shoot him a remarkably human sneer. "Then she's the one who enchanted it. Or you were dumb enough to let your food out of your sight and deserve being a frog."

"Rude," Jim sang under his breath. He jostled Spock gently. "Fess up, where's your mom?"

"Fess?"

"Confess!" Kit yowled, drawing the second syllable out considerably longer than was necessary.

"I cannot see that I should need to confess—"

"Slang," Jim said, jostling Spock again. "Do you know where she is?"

Spock resettled his flippers. "As I mentioned earlier, she told me she was attending a panel on the xenobiological impact of cross-cultural contaminants. The panel, which cannot be real given this is not actually a conference, should have run until dinner. Therefore, I have no solid idea of where she must be at this time."

Jim peered down at Spock. "So where were you all morning, if not with your mom?"

Spock thought of the long hours he'd spent listening to his mother chatter about how much fun the conference would be. All the time on the ship over, and weeks before that on Vulcan, her excitement bubbling around her like a haze. She wanted so badly to spend the time with him, to bond, as she called it. That desire hummed through her with such strength it began to spill over onto Spock whenever they were close, touching him through their familial bond, reminding him again of how weak his shields were. His father felt nothing, even as Spock's head ached with his mother's joy. A true Vulcan would feel nothing.

The night before the conference, Spock told his mother he would not go with her. The conference was a waste of time. Spock had no need of bonding; he would use the time and quiet away from her to practice his mental discipline.

Amanda's joy finally hushed.

In the morning, Spock found her gone. She'd left a boxed lunch for him with her schedule affixed to the front. No reason in wasting it, the note explained. Spock's ability to focus on meditation splintered. Human guilt nagged at him.

So he decided to give her the day. Surely a single day wouldn't matter in the long stretch of his life. Satisfied at their "bonding", she would attend the rest of the conference herself, leaving him to his studies. Spock took the lunch, and looked for her, and ate her food when he got hungry. And turned into a frog.

And met Jim.

None of which Jim needed to know.

"I explored the grounds for some time before deciding to rejoin my mother," he said. "Before I found her, I ate the apple."

"And here we are," Kit muttered.

"Well, it's not an infinite fair," Jim said, "luckily. We'll find her if we look in the right places. It's just a matter of figuring out where those are. And, hey, maybe we'll find the person I'm looking for first, and they can point us in the right directions."

"Who are you looking for?" Spock asked.

"Mustn't ask us," Kit hissed in a gravelly voice. "Not its business."

Jim toed Kit in the side. "No obscure literature references with the alien, it's not polite."

"Tolkien is not obscure," Spock said before he could stop himself.

Kit and Jim both looked at him in surprise, though Jim's expression melted quickly to amusement. "Pardon my assumptions," the Terran said with a grin. "Anyway, let's get started."

They began with what Spock assumed were the usual places: a café, a little atrium filled with light and roses and hanging vines, a bustling market tucked under and behind an unused staircase. After that, their search got…bizarre. Jim took him to a room filled with animated skeletons all mingling at little tables.

"Oops," he muttered, closing the door quickly. "Didn't know they were doing a speed dating thing, should have avoided that. Sorry, I know it's a weird way of meeting people, but the skeletons seem to really dig it."

"Buh-dum, tssssh," Kit said.

"It wasn't a joke," Jim told her petulantly. "Spock might be scarred forever, speed dating is the worst."

Speed dating wasn't the part of that room Spock found exceptional, which Jim didn't seem to notice. What kind of a world was this?

A world, apparently, that had a room-sized tank of mermaids and other humanoid water creatures arguing animatedly over blobs of sagging, unfired clay sculptures. A world of magic potions lined up for sale by a man being harassed for his permits by a security officer who filled out her uniform but was also otherwise invisible.

A world of nightmare creatures who sometimes looked at Jim like he was their worst fear brought to life.

"All right," Jim said eventually, "I know you feel pretty confident that your mom isn't one, but if we don't find her in the witches' lounge then our next stop is the second floor, and I would really rather not take you there as a frog. There's some weird people up there."

Weird people up there? What were the people down here?

"At this point," Spock said, "I have no confidence at all about what my mother might or might not be. She knew what this place was and gave me no warning. Worse, she lied about it. Perhaps she is a witch, and this is a lesson, and I'll never learn it until I find her and ask what her intentions were. I believe she may have been angry with me; she may have done this as—"

Jim slid Spock down his forearm until he could hold him in both hands, lifting him so they were on eye level. "I don't really know you," he said, "and I don't know your mom at all. But I can tell about people, sometimes, if I look at them just right. I've been looking at you all day, Spock. You aren't the son of a petty mother. You aren't here like this with the touch of vengeance on you. I still think there's a lesson, but I think it's a fun one. I think you'll like it. Your mom will know for sure, though." He tucked Spock back into the crook of his elbow. "Let's go find her."

Spock settled as best he could, warmed and confused, content to let Jim take him into the witches' lounge while he ordered his thoughts.

The door said Occupied, looked like it belonged to a broom closet, and just barely muffled the sound of many voices. When Jim put his hand on the knob, it glowed red under his palm for a long moment. Spock looked up at Jim just in time to see light gleam over his left pupil like a reflection over glossy paint. The handle returned to its usual color.

Someone yanked the door open from the inside.

"Do you have any idea," the woman in front of them began angrily, "how much work went into the spell you just—"

Jim rummaged through his bag until he produced a slip of paper. "With my compliments," he said, handing it over.

The woman eyed it suspiciously, then did the same to Jim, then sighed mightily. "Oh, all right, come in. If you weren't so cute, I'd'v'e made you into stew years ago."

"Lies," Jim said, stepping into the room when the woman stepped back. "I'd make a much better pie."

"It's so true," the woman said wistfully. She shut the door, stuck Jim's paper to it, and wandered away.

"Who," Spock began.

"Not important," Kit chirped up at him.

Spock meant to argue (why did they keep not telling him things?), but at that moment, his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting. The room looked like a bar, with bottles of alcohol lining the far wall and a few tables scattered throughout. Groups of two or three low, plush chairs clustered in each of the four corners. People of all description sat alone or in groups, chatting or sketching together or laughing, arguing or raising their glasses for a toast, their voices a low, constant hum of human emotion.

His mother sat at the bar. She had a drink in her hand that someone had put a small umbrella into. A woman sat on her right; a creature of some nature on her left. They were all laughing. At that moment, for no reason Spock could determine, Amanda sat up, expression warming with anticipation as her companions left her. Her eyes swept over the room before settling, not on Jim, but on Spock. Her mouth lifted in a smile. "Hello, Spock," she said, clear in his ears despite her distance.

"Oh man," Jim said above him. "Is that your mom? I think we've been looking for the same person!" He crossed the room to hold Spock out for her. "I don't think he was a frog for long before I found him, but this could have ended really badly. Which, I mean, you must have known."

Amanda gathered Spock into her hands gently, smiling at him for a long, quiet moment. "Did you have fun?" she asked.

Spock opened his mouth, then closed it again, considering the question. "My world is larger than it was," he said at last, "and I am…curious. I would have liked exploring it with you."

His mother's thumb stroked over his head. "We have all weekend, still, if you like."

"I would find that very satisfying." Spock tilted his head thoughtfully. "Could Jim accompany us, if he would like to? And Kit as well."

Amanda laughed, bright and warm, running a thumb down his back. "Oh, Spock. You always did excel at your lessons." She leaned down to kiss his head, and the world righted itself around him.

"Whoa," Jim breathed.

"He's hot," Kit agreed approvingly.

Spock looked back, looked down, and met Jim's mismatched gaze. "Hello," he said. "I am Spock."

Jim's grin split his face. "Nice to meet you again."

"Allow me to present my mother," Spock continued, stepping aside to let them shake hands in the Terran fashion. "Amanda Grayson."

"A pleasure," Jim said, taking her hand firmly. "I've actually heard a lot about you, not just from you son, who is a genuine delight."

Spock felt one of his eyebrow lift in curiosity.

"I know," Amanda said with a mysterious swirl of her beverage. "I've been waiting for you, Jim. And you," she added, setting her glass aside to bend and scratch under Kit's chin. "You're a fine, strong girl, Kit. What you're worried about won't come to pass. You'll be okay."

Kit's tail lashed as she butted hard into Amanda's palm, leaping into her arms when his mother opened them.

"Me next," Jim said, smile friendly and unassuming. Spock felt a moment of longing for when he'd been a frog in Jim's hands, able to sense deeper than the show Jim put on for those around him.

Illogical.

Amanda laughed softly as she straightened, Kit still cuddled to her chest. "Spock next," she said, turning to him. "Go on, my son: Ask."

For a moment, Spock struggled to form the correct words. He finally settled on, "There is something to this conversation I am not privy to."

Jim looked startled. "He doesn't know?"

Spock turned to his mother expectantly, arms tucked behind his back, eyebrow lifted in challenge. "Know?" he echoed.

"Think about it," Amanda offered. "Without any lens of disbelief, based only on your observations. What have you seen? What have you heard?"

"You are known here," Spock began immediately. "Your standing is good enough that you secured entrance for me, despite my ignorance of this whole sphere of existence. You are in a place reserved for witches, to go by the name, or perhaps simply magic users more generally, or of a specific type. You enchanted an apple that turned me into a frog, Mother."

She stifled a giggle in the scruff of Kit's neck. "Only for a little while, my son," she replied. "And in service to a very good cause."

Jim touched his elbow to Spock's side in what appeared to be encouragement. "Keep going, this is the best. You're like a detective."

Spock suppressed an unexpected and inappropriate urge to preen under even so slight a compliment. "It would seem logical to conclude you are either a witch, specifically, or some other type of magic user."

"Getting warm," Kit said. Amanda resumed scratching under her chin to encourage purring rather than commentary.

"There are details," Spock continued, "I am…unsure of. I do not understand their significance, although I am certain they are vital."

"Tell me," Amanda prompted. "I'll help you understand."

Spock indicated Jim with a small motion before resettling his hands at the small of his back. "Jim said when we first met that he was looking for someone, and just now he indicated that person is you. He would not need you specifically above any other witch unless you had something specific you could do for him. He would ask it of you when he would not of the creature in the shop at the end of the hall."

Amanda's smile froze, her hand on Kit's back curling in to grip her fur. Slowly, with a sense of deep, building malice, she turned to face the Terran teenager.

Jim's hands were already up defensively. "It was fine! I didn't let him ask any questions or get any names or give any so it's fine. We only went there because I had to pick up something for the Doyles, and, to be fair, I had to do that before I found frog Spock. Frock. Spog? Anyway, that errand is the only reason I even got to come here today, so, I mean, I feel strongly you should have known better if you didn't want him to go with me."

"There are some things even I can't see," Amanda protested. "He's so new. You should have known better!"

"We did know better," Kit said, shaking Amanda's hand off so she could leap delicately onto Jim's shoulders. He adjusted to her weight thoughtlessly, gaze calm and level and dark on Amanda's. "Why do you think we took such good care of him? You should have known better, leaving him defenseless in a place like this. What if we hadn't gotten there first?"

Amanda sighed heavily through her nose, reaching back to grab her umbrella drink. "You do get there first," she said with certainty. "Always."

"That is another piece I do not quite know how to interpret," Spock interrupted, unwilling to let them argue around him any longer. He tilted his head when they all turned to him. "You spoke to Kit of comfort in the future tense. You continue to reference knowing, as though you were aware events would unfold in this manner. But, Mother, clairvoyance—" He hesitated, trying to hold to her request that he view the situation without the lens of disbelief. If he could spend the day as a frog, why could his mother not—

Could she—

"Why did you marry Father?" he blurted, shaken by his own question, by his desperation to understand her. "Even I am aware of how you suffer at times under Vulcan society, how they treat you, even to your face. Who knows that better than I? They tell me of what a disadvantage your blood is in mine. If you are— If you could see— Why—?"

"My son." Amanda reached out to cup his cheek in one palm, sending the warmth of her love and contentment shivering through him, calming the riot of his thoughts. "I married your father because I loved him, as I knew I would before I even met him. I saw hardship and pain, yes, but I also saw you. This. Every day we are together. I saw Sarek in our quiet moments, cherishing me despite himself, with all the strength of Vulcan love. I do see, Spock, this future and others. It has never stopped me living my life, or loving my family, or being truly happy."

Spock blew out a long, trembling breath, re-centering his world to accept its new dimensions. "And Father?" he asked. "Have you told Sarek?"

"If I had told you of this yesterday, would you have believed me? Without your own experience, how could you possibly?" His mother shook her head. "I could never tell Sarek, and he will never need to know. Even if I brought him here, he would not see. Would not believe. And I do not need him to, Spock. I love him as he is. Be content, my dear. We will live with your father and have this for ourselves. All is well."

"And you, Jim?" Spock asked, turning to him so suddenly the Terran blinked, hand raised to stroke one of Kit's delicate ears. "What would you ask of my mother?"

Jim's mismatched eyes studied Spock, searching him for something, before sliding over to Amanda. "I'm not a seer," he said, casual in the face of Spock's entire reality shifting under his feet.

"Are you sure?" Amanda asked, friendly warmth in her tone but not quite matched by her expression. She lifted a hand toward Jim's darker eye, dropping it when he leaned away.

"Better not," he said firmly. "And yes, I am. I don't see. Not the future, anyway. But, recently, there have been…"

"Dreams," Kit murmured when Jim faltered, butting her head against his. "He has nightmares now."

"Just one," Jim said. "I think it's—she's…" He gestured to the same eye Amanda reached for. "It feels like a calling. Like hunger. Familiar. There's something I'm supposed to do, I think. But I don't…" He shook his head. "It'd have to be awful, to reach me this way. I don't—" He struggled for a moment before blowing out a sigh. "I don't want to. Is it— Do I have to?"

Jim sounded, in that last moment, nothing like the confident, brash guide to the unknown Spock had traveled with that day. He sounded…young. Lost. Desperate for comfort he wasn't sure would come. Spock found himself shifting closer to him without meaning to and made himself stop short of touching Jim's arm.

Amanda did not. She wrapped Jim in a hug, jostling Kit on her perch, and pressed her cheek to his. "Oh, Jim," she murmured. "You're right, and wrong, and worrying too much. You'll know better soon enough. Try not to think of the calling, if you can. Dwelling won't help."

"So I will," Jim said, voice shaking, arms tight around Amanda. "I will have to go."

"You won't have to," she soothed. Jim slumped in her arms, utterly relieved. Spock, beside them, frowned.

Not having to go didn't mean not going at all. It indicated a lack of reluctance, but not an end to the journey itself.

Spock looked up to find Kit watching him, eyes solemn. So she, too, noticed. Perhaps she would bring it up with Jim later.

They both switched their attention to Jim when he straightened from Amanda's hold, scrubbing a hand over his right eye, relief gathering in his smile like dew on a desert blossom.

…Perhaps not. Surely Kit would be reluctant to spoil Jim's newfound mental peace, especially over something Amanda indicated was inevitable. Perhaps they would form a conspiracy of kindness to keep Jim focused on the world around him rather than whatever dream it was that haunted him.

Perhaps Spock could do his part starting now.

"Mother," he said, perfecting his posture as he turned to her. Her eyes shone with mirth, causing Spock to wonder if she already knew what his question would be, already knew what Jim's response would be, already saw the night spiraling out before them.

But Jim wasn't a seer. Jim didn't know.

So Spock said, "It is late, and I, at least, have not eaten since the bite of apple earlier today. Jim and Kit I cannot speak for, though they never ate in my presence. Perhaps we might take our evening meal together. I do think Jim and Kit deserve some small thanks for showing me the fair and bringing me to you."

"No need to thank us," Jim insisted.

Kit bit his ear. "Speak for yourself!" she said over Jim's yelp.

"It would not only be for gratitude," Spock insisted, feeling his heart rate increase inexplicably when Jim's two-toned blue eyes turned to him. "I would also— I have heard," he tried again, "that among Terrans, shared meals are a way of…solidifying friendship."

Jim beamed. "Dinner sounds great," he said just as his stomach made a most alarming growling noise. He blushed, pressing a hand to it. "Sorry. Guess I'm hungrier than I realized!"

"As it happens," Amanda said, beginning to herd them back toward the door, "I already made reservations. You're going to love the salmon," she told Kit.

"That's never going to get old," Jim laughed, holding the door open for their party when they reached it.

"No," Amanda agreed, smiling when Jim grinned at her. She led them outside the fair, back into New York proper, looking the same as it had that morning before Spock knew anything about the creatures hidden there. He wondered who else around him knew about his mother's world—Jim's world, complete with talking cat. What else went on beyond or beneath his notice?

They reached the restaurant without issue and were admitted despite the cat on Jim's shoulder. People inclined their heads to Amanda, occasionally either waving at or flinching away from Jim, whose smile never wavered.

"Why do they do that?" Spock asked as he slid into the chair next to Jim's.

"Do what?"

"Faker," Amanda said, unfolding her menu to peer over it at them.

Jim wrinkled his nose at her. "The ones who wave are friends," he explained to Spock. "The ones who don't, uh. Well, they know me. Of me." His eyes cut away. "I've got something of a reputation. Wild childhood."

Spock considered him, thinking of the data he'd collected about Jim throughout the day. "Is it your eye?" he asked, cataloging Jim's clenched jaw as another data point. "There's something about it. Something…"

"Other," Kit murmured, slinking down from Jim's shoulder to drink from his water glass.

"Other?" Spock echoed.

"It's nothing," Jim said. He glanced toward Amanda's watchful presence. "Nothing important. Not right now," he insisted. "It might never come up at all!"

"You see something, don't you," Spock pressed. "Is that what you call what you see? Other?"

"I think I'll order a cheeseburger," Jim replied, opening his menu pointedly. Amanda ducked behind hers, perhaps to hide her reaction. Kit gave him a meaningful feline look and sauntered around the edge of Amanda's barrier to settle in her lap.

Or to give Spock an opening. He leaned in close to Jim's ear, clustered together over his menu as though discussing it contents. "If my mother is a seer," he murmured low where only Jim would hear him, "which you claim not to be, what are you, Jim?"

"It doesn't matter," Jim said, matching his tone and body language until their foreheads were nearly pressed together. Attempting to force Spock to withdraw?

Illogical.

"It matters to me," Spock said. He tiled his head so their hair brushed together, finding irrational triumph in the visible shiver it sent down Jim's spine. "You spent the better portion of your day engendering curiosity in me. I think it only right you satisfy it."

"You win," Jim announced, sitting back with blood flushed high in his cheeks. "I'm still not telling you. Anyway, what does it matter? You'll be gone by Monday." Something wistful filled Jim's words at the last phrase.

That, at least, Spock could untangle. "Why should I be gone?" he asked, opening his own menu at last.

Jim's expression clouded with uncertainty. "You…said your mom brought you here for a conference? Those usually only last the weekend."

"I said my mother asked me to attend a conference with her while on planet for my father's business," Spock corrected. "Our business with the fair might take only a weekend; my father's work is indefinite."

Jim appeared to struggle for a long moment, searching Spock's face for a hint of misdirection. Spock laid his curiosity bare and waited. "Could be dangerous," the Terran said at last. "Hanging around me, I mean. Could be bad for your health."

"Could be an adventure," Kit chirped from Amanda's lap.

"Could be a beginning," Amanda added.

Jim's eyes flicked to what he could see of her over the menu then back to Spock, uncertainly warring with blossoming interest. "Could be a lot of things," he murmured.

"Perhaps even all of them," Spock agreed. "Still, I would know your world better. Would know you better. Other than my parents, I know no one else in the city. It could, indeed, be a most fortune meeting."

"You were a frog," Jim protested.

Spock shrugged. "I did not suffer for it. And more, being a frog did not impair my mental abilities. While a frog, I was still a scientist. There is much I might learn here."

Jim took a deep breath; released it, and his tension, in a sigh. "I could show you around," he offered with a crooked smile. "I still have my errands I have to run, but the Doyles won't mind. Maybe I could pick you up on Monday?"

"Excellent," came the dueled-toned, conspiratorial whisper from behind Amanda's menu.

Spock ignored them. "Monday," he agreed.

Their waiter came, and they ordered. After lunch, they went their separate ways, Spock and his mother back to their hotel, Jim and Kit to…wherever it was they came from.

On Monday, the lobby called up to Spock to let him know he had a visitor.

The adventure began immediately.

---

Jim swung into Spock's room through the window.

"We are on the seventy-eighth floor," Spock protested, rushing to the window to grab Jim's elbow and pull him more swiftly inside. Jim hopped a little on one foot before regaining balance. Kit meowed at Spock from her spot on Jim's shoulder. "You are worse than he," the Vulcan told her. "Balancing on Jim! What if you fell?"

"Not likely," Jim said, brushing off his pants. "You living in a tall, tall tower is what fairytale magic is made for."

Spock frowned, trying to make sense of that. "Elaborate."

"Nah." Jim grinned at him. "It'll ruin the fun." He shrugged off the backpack he was wearing.

"Is this fun in the same vein as the mummies?" Spock asked, holding his arms out so Kit could jump to a less twitchy perch.

"The mummies were awesome," she murmured, reaching her head up to butt under Spock's chin.

Jim knelt to begin digging through the bag. "Garbage, garbage, math homework—"

"That's due soon," Kit reminded him. "Like, tomorrow, I think."

"Eh." Jim tossed it aside. "You're gonna love this, Spock, we're gonna see some—"

"No," Spock said.

Jim sat back on his heels with a puzzled expression, wild blond hair flopping forward into his eyes. "No?" he wondered.

Spock set Kit down on his bed, then crossed over to Jim to pick up his math papers. He held them out to the Terran. "You must finish these first," he said.

"Aww, no," Jim whined, shying away from them. "But it's so boring."

"It is not boring." Spock gave the papers a shake in Jim's direction. "Math is the language of the universe. It is necessary to both your education in general and the expansion of your mind more specifically. I will not go on another monster hunt unless you can assure me all your studies have been completed."

"It's not a monster hunt this time," Jim wheedled. "So your ultimatum doesn't count. Right? I think that should be right."

Spock arched an eyebrow at him, then held his position, unmoving, until Jim sighed and snatched the papers out of his hand. "You may use the desk to complete your work. Do you have a writing implement or must I find one? I will admit, I had not expected your school to still assign paper homework."

"My teachers are old school," Jim grumbled, grabbing a pen from his bag before slouching over to the desk. "I don't think most of them have ever even seen a PADD, much less assigned homework on one."

Spock sat on the bed next to Kit, allowing her to climb into his lap for petting. "I do not understand."

"Jim's a genius," Kit purred, arching her back under his hand. "Plus he's got that eye, y'know? Not always safe for the normal kids. So he's got tutors. Really, really old tutors."

"…What kind of tutors?" Spock asked after struggling with his curiosity for a long minute.

Jim, absorbed in his math studies, did not answer.

"Mostly ghosts," Kit said in his stead. "The math teacher's a skeleton, though. I think she was around before calculus, sometimes she forgets stuff and Jim has to remind her."

Spock's eyebrows lifted in poorly contained surprise. "You are doing calculus?" he asked Jim. "But you are only thirteen. I thought Terran students waited until high school for more advanced math."

"Genius," Kit sang. "I don't think any of his studies have been regular kid level in, like, ever."

"There," Jim proclaimed, clicking the end of his pen to retract the tip. "Done." He turned to Speck, hefting the pages at him. "Can we go now? I think you'll like this!"

"That took much less time than I had thought it would," Spock said, "given the excess of your complaining."

"It was easy," Jim said. He crossed the room to stuff his math papers back into his bag. "You ready to go? Where are your shoes?"

Spock did not stand. "If it was so easy, why did you not complete it before coming?"

"Didn't want to," Jim explained, frustration building in his tone. "Can we please go?"

"Why did you not wish to?" Spock asked.

Jim threw his hands in the air. "What does it matter! I didn't want to, then you made me, now it's done. Let's just go already!"

"He hasn't been sleeping well," Kit said with a flick of her tail. "It's made him cranky for days."

"Why is he not sleeping well?" Spock asked the cat. Jim protested loudly at being ignored, which had precisely no effect.

Kit looked up to meet Spock's eyes, surprising him, as she always did, with the depth of emotion he could see there. "It's those same dreams. Remember, he asked your mother about them at the fair?"

"Still?" Spock asked her, then lifted his eyes to meet Jim's scowl. "Are they the same?"

"I don't want to talk about it," he bit out.

"Why would you speak to my mother about them but not me?" Spock asked with a disapproving tilt of his head. "Kit knows, too. Am I alone unworthy?

Jim visibly struggled with his response for a long moment. Then he sighed, walked over to sit by Spock on the bed, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. "It's not that I think you aren't worthy," he said softly. "It's—No offence, but I don't know how you could help."

"I have read in Terran psychology papers," Spock replied, "that talking can be quite helpful in relieving stress. Also, perhaps having an outside opinion would alleviate enough of your anxiety on the topic to cause the dream to cease, even for a little while."

"I am not," Jim began, swelling slightly with offence. Kit swatted his thigh. He looked at her, deflated on another sigh, and nodded. "Yeah, okay, I guess I'm pretty anxious about it. But what's there to share? In the dream, I'm in darkness. I can hear someone screaming—lots of someones. I don't know who they are, or where, or how to find them or anything. They're crying. I want to—"

Jim shook his head sharply, hands twisted together, eyes locked on the digits squeezed pale in his lap. "In the dream," he whispered. "The me in the dream. I want to eat them. They sound terrified and lost, and it's delicious. I would eat them all. There's something else there, something just as hungry, but more excited. It knows where the people are. It caused them to suffer. The suffering is food on its own, but it's going to eat them. Thousands of them. They're all so lost and hungry, but not hungrier than the creature. I want to join it when I'm asleep. I want to stop it when I'm awake. But mostly, I want it to leave me alone.

"Anyway, it doesn't matter." Jim straightened out of his hunch, tossing his head as though that would help rid him of the emotions even now causing his hands to shake. "Your mom said I don't have to go, right? So I don't have to, so it's not important." He stood up. "Let's go."

For a long, quiet minute, Spock only looked at him. Then "We are going to meditate," he said, putting Kit aside to move more fully onto the bed and cross his legs. "Right now. We will go after you are settled."

"What?" Jim squawked while Kit padded her way up to the pillows to curl in among them. "No! I wanna show you the— No." He set his jaw. "I didn't tell you so you'd pity me."

Spock settled his hands on his knees. "Do you imagine I meditate daily to show myself pity?" he asked with as calm an expression as he could manage. "I meditate to focus, to gain perspective, to seek tranquility beyond the pull and push of emotion. Meditation is not pity. It is a practice in self-discipline and self-care. Come, Jim. I will be insistent if I must."

"You have to write a cultural exchange paper soon anyway," Kit added from her new throne. "I'm sure this could totally count. Assuming meditation is a Vulcan thing and not just, like, a Spock thing." She flicked one ear. "…Is it?"

"It is," Spock agreed, motioning Jim closer. "I will help you meditate this first time, and then I will explain it on our way to wherever it is you insist we go."

Jim sat reluctantly, pulling his limbs in to imitate Spock's. "Like this?" he asked, uncertainty in every line of his body.

Spock leaned forward to correct his posture. Catching the flavors of Jim's emotional state through direct contact with his skin was a fortunate coincidence. The sharpest thrum rising from the Terran was discomfort: he did not want to be where he was doing what they were doing. Jim felt restless. Unsettled. Underneath all that was the staticky buzz of deep, unyielding exhaustion. More than anything else, Jim needed rest.

Perfect.

"With me," Spock said, straightening into the proper form. He shut his eyes, trusting Jim to do the same, and began talking in low, soothing tones. For the next twenty-three and one-third minutes, Spock walked Jim through a traditional meditation used to center the brain for the purpose of sleep. At that point, Jim's gradually listing body finally succumbed to Spock's plan and slumped over. Spock opened his eyes, climbed carefully off the bed, and circled around the other side for better access to Jim. He gently rearranged the Terran out of his tangle, straightening his limbs while using his telepathy to eavesdrop for signs that Jim might be waking.

Once Jim was comfortable, Spock spread his sleep robe over him for warmth, and crossed over to his desk to sit and read until Jim woke.

"Sneaky," Kit commented, still ensconced in the pillows.

"As long as he is this tired, he will be in danger of causing harm to himself or us," Spock murmured in return, flicking through his PADD for an interesting option. "He does not consider consequences once his exhaustion beings to distract him."

"No complaints from me," Kit said with a yawn. "The thing he wants to show you is gonna keep on happening for the next three days; there's no rush. Plus, he brought us to your room via the window. I'd rather not make that a habit."

Spock set down his PADD. "How did he do that?" he asked. "I still cannot reason through the mechanics of it. Neither of you had any visible tools with you when you arrived."

Kit rested her head on her forepaws and shut her eyes. "Wake me when he gets up, okay?" She either fell asleep immediately or pretended to very effectively.

Very well.

Spock resumed his reading, and his waiting, and carried on his vigil alone.

…

Jim woke eventually, after which he complained for half an hour. Once he grumbled himself to a halt, he led Spock out the hotel (by way of the elevator and front doors), through the city, and to a hidden outcropping of rocks in the bay.

People gathered there, partly in the water, partly just outside it, grouped in what might be large families or clusters of friends, each naked in the pale light of morning just before dawn. Each also had a brown-speckled piece of gray cloth draped somewhere over their body, this one covering a leg, that a shoulder, many of them pulled around the shoulders. They were grooming each other in the way of many Terran mammals, fixing hair or dusting sand off brown skin.

They were also singing. Low, haunting songs Spock had never heard before, in a language he did not recognize. Their harmonies rose and fell like water lapping at the shore. Spock's first impulse upon seeing the twenty or so people had been to ask Jim about them. As soon as he registered the singing, though, he felt his breath go still in his lungs.

It was like nothing he had ever experienced before.

The sun crested over the horizon. Their song carried out into one last, lingering multi-toned note. Each person gathered their gray cloth and pulled it firmly around their shoulders. In a shift of flesh and reality, they turned into a group of seals, rolled into the water, and were gone.

"Selkies," Jim said after a few minutes of disbelieving silence. "Seal people. I'm sure you noticed they're human-shaped when they're not wearing their pelts and seal-shaped when they are. They don't usually all come up like this, but it's, like, I forget the word, they get together and sing every six or so months." He turned a spectacular grin on Spock. "Worth staying up all night for, huh?"

Spock, for a long time, had no words. "Selkies," he said at last, marveling.

"Regular people think they're a myth," Kit said from her spot curled in Jim's lap. "Irish or Scottish or, like, Icelandic or something. Really they're all over. Anywhere with seals has selkies."

Jim clapped Spock on the shoulder. "I'll send you a book," he said. He climbed to his feet and offered Spock a hand up.

Spock accepted, taking the opportunity to check on Jim's emotions, which seemed considerably more level, after the nap and the singing. "Please do," he said when Jim released his hand. "I would also be grateful if you would let me know how your nightmares develop. I could teach you more meditation."

"Sure thing," Jim said while rolling his eyes.

At first, Jim did. The dreams did not abate or grow less frightening. Within a few weeks, Jim's description of the dreams began tapering off only to disappear altogether. Nothing Spock said or did could convince Jim to continue sharing. Even Kit became totally mute on the subject, demonstrating just how concerning their situation really was. Spock resolved to try harder.

After all, Spock was Vulcan. And Vulcans had many other ways to fight the darkness in people's minds. He just had to convince Jim.

There had to be a way.

---

Spock tackled Jim to the ground just as a venomous spine shot through the space where his chest had been.

"Thanks," Jim wheezed under him, lifting one hand to pat his back. "Look," he called to the manticore sulking in the far corner of the abandoned barn, "do not make me get serious here. I want the silver spoon. Let us take it and we'll go."

"But it's mine," the manticore grumbled, voice ringing like music.

Spock pulled Jim to his feet. "Whining won't get you anywhere," Jim scolded, brushing off first his own and then Spock's clothes, knocking dirt and bits of hay back down to the general disorder of the floor. "And it's very rude to try and kill us with poison spines, by the way."

"Venomous," Spock and the manticore corrected in unison.

The manticore's rounded lion's ears perked up. "You know they're venomous?"

"They would have to be," Spock said, picking a final piece of straw off the back of Jim's shirt, "since your attack requires no ingestion."

"You wanna talk about ingestion more?" it asked hopefully. "I haven't had breakfast, and you smell, man, let me tell you—"

"We're getting distracted," Jim interrupted, pressing a hand against Spock's chest to push him slightly behind Jim's smaller body. "Where is the spoon? It's important."

"But it's shiny," the manticore protested. "And it's mine."

"It's not yours, do you have any idea what we've been through to— Hey!"

Spock ignored Jim's complaints to continue digging through the Terran's pockets. He produced the folded silver wrapper of a stick of gum Jim had been chewing the day before. "This, also, is shiny. Furthermore, it crinkles, which the spoon cannot do. Perhaps we might trade."

"It's pretty small," the manticore said, trying to sound skeptical despite the interested quirk of its whiskers.

Jim sighed heavily. "Okay. How about you let me and Spock go, and we'll come back with a ton of cool shiny crinkly stuff, and you give us the spoon?"

"Maybe," the manticore hedged. Its scorpion tail curled and flexed in a mannerism that looked to Spock very like Kit's when she was curious.

"We will return within the hour," Spock said, hooking an arm through Jim's to tow him out of the building. They left the gum wrapper as a sign of good faith.

"Poltergeists," Jim muttered, beginning to count points off on his fingers, "ghouls, a mummy, werewolves and a ton of ghosts and some of those obnoxious high society people and that friggin' nosferatu. This is what stumps us. A spoon. It's been a week since we started looking for it."

"In fairness," Spock said as they walked toward the taxi they'd paid heavily to wait for them, "the spoon isn't the issue."

Jim flailed his hands at Spock, then at the barn, then through the air in general. "Manticore!" he exclaimed. "Who knew, right?"

Spock got into the back of the cab while Jim was still frowning at the barn like his displeasure alone could make the manticore vanish. Jim could do many things Spock still didn't understand. Who knew? Perhaps disappearing cryptids was one of them. In case it was not, Spock leaned over to pop Jim's door open. "What will we give the manticore?" he asked. "More wrappers?"

"Nah," Jim said. He squinted at the barn for another long moment, hands on his hips, radiating disapproval, then sighed heavily. "We can do better for her than trash."

"Her?" Spock asked as Jim slid in beside him. "I thought the manticore must be either genderless or male, owing to the mane."

Jim hit a button below the soundproof glass that sequestered them from their driver. The driver, a gorgon who had sunglasses matching her own on each of the dozens of individual snakes making up her hair, flipped a switch on the dashboard without looking up from her PADD.

"Yeah," she said.

"We need to go to the shopping center on Main Street," Jim said. "We've got to do a little bit of buying, then come back here. Is that okay?"

"It's your fare," she said distractedly. She flipped the switch back off to mute them, wedged her PADD under one thigh, then turned the vehicle on and pulled out toward the dirt road that would lead them back to civilization.

Jim huffed a laugh and leaned back in his seat. "All manticores look the same, basically," he said to Spock, getting back to the initial question. "Body of a red lion, face of a man, scorpion tail. Some of them get fancy with bat wings, but that's not standard. They code male, but that doesn't mean they are. I suppose some of them must be non-binary or fluid, just based on how gender expression works, but that one's female."

"How could you tell? How might I tell, in the future, were I to meet one alone?"

"Don't do that," Jim protested strongly, turning to grab one of Spock's hands. Worry and determination sparked from their contact, running up Spock's arm like touching a livewire. "Not on your own, okay? Don't do it. Promise."

"Life being what it is," Spock said, watching Jim's expression sour, "I cannot make such a promise. I can say I will not actively seek one out."

"…Fine," Jim grumbled, folding his arms. "I'll take it. Anyway, I don't think you could tell on your own, unless you, like, asked, and I don't know what manticore gender etiquette is like. Asking might be polite, and it also might get you, y'know, killed and eaten."

"We would have been killed and eaten anyway," Spock pointed out, "if the creature hadn't spent most of its time cowering from you."

Jim winced faintly, turning his gaze out toward the scenery blurring by them. "It's all kind of related," he admitted grudgingly. "The manticore doesn't like me for the same reason I can tell she's female."

"Because you can see," Spock murmured, still watching him. "Because of how you see. Your eye."

"The button," Jim agreed, soft and nonsensical as always, insistent that the dark and light of his left eye resembled a button without ever explaining why.

"Someday you will tell me," Spock swore.

"That'd end badly, I think," Jim said. He shook his head, affecting an easy smile that almost never failed to charm its target. Spock, while moved by it for reasons he couldn't quite pinpoint, was not actually dissuaded from his goal. "Anyway, back to the original topic, no, we're not gonna give her a bunch of gum wrappers. For one, I think it'd take a lot. Nobody wants that much gum. For another, she deserves better than our garbage. I have some ideas though."

"Such as?" Spock prompted, keeping his voice dry so Jim would know how little he cared for the needless ongoing dramatic pauses.

A grin pulled at Jim's mouth as their driver turned into the parking lot of an old shopping center. "You ever been in a pet store?"

…

The manticore inspected the tin foil unfurled between Spock's hands with poorly faked disinterest. "I don't know," she hedged, one paw curled up by her chest as she struggled against reaching out to paw at it.

"Not to worry," Jim said, hefting a medium sized cardboard box so it would be easier to dump onto the ground. "We have more." He released the contents with a series of rough shakes.

Dozens of multicolored cat toys Jim called crinkle balls poured out over the ground. They varied in size from a few inches in diameter to larger than Spock's fist. The polyester film reflected rainbows across the walls and ceiling, stronger where the afternoon light hit them directly.

The manticore squealed like the high blare of a trumpet, pouncing on the pile to roll around in the shiny, noisy toys.

Jim tossed his empty box aside, walking toward the corner where the manticore had been sulking not even an hour earlier. He rooted around in the hay with his foot, stooping to pick up the small, tarnished silver spoon when he found it. "Y'know," Jim said, turning to the ecstatic manticore while he put the spoon in his pocket, "you don't have to live here unless it's what you want."

The manticore ignored him, happily batting one of the larger balls between her paws.

"I'm just saying," the Terran continued. "There are rescue groups. You could have a better home, someplace warm. I could send someone trustworthy out to talk to you. You don't have to live in this barn, unless it's what you want."

"A cryptid rescue group?" Spock asked. "Or one specific to manticores?"

"Either way," the manticore interrupted as Jim opened his mouth to explain, "it sounds dangerous. How do I know they're not out to kill me? A lot of humans are."

Jim nodded. "True. We're not, though. And we could have."

"Hardly," she scoffed.

"I could."

Spock watched the manticore size Jim up. At first, she continued to appear dismissive. Jim tilted his head, smile curling just at the corners, eyes locked with hers. Something unfurled between them, darkness Spock had sensed before—even from his first introduction to Jim at the fair—that seemed to live always in Jim, deep where it could stay hidden.

Most of the time.

Now Jim let the hint of it leak from his skin, solid enough that Spock could sense it without touching him. What would it be like if he could touch Jim, feel this…otherness at its source? If Jim ever permitted it, would Spock be able to seek out the secret in his mind through a meld? Would it hide from him, or would it stretch out, hungry and beckoning, as it did now for the manticore? The echo of its long, grasping fingers stole the breath from Spock, stoking the curiosity that burned hotter in him every additional moment he spent in Jim's company.

Where did the darkness live? What was it? How had it come to be Jim's? Did it grow or fade with time? Would it always be part of him?

What did his mind look like, in or around or with the darkness?

Would he ever let Spock see?

"All right," the manticore said, voice shaken, ducked low against the ground with her ears folded back. "Okay, I get it. You can stop. Don't—Don't let it touch me. I believe you."

Jim nodded. Within a heartbeat, all traces of the darkness vanished, tucked neatly away inside a simple Terran vessel. "So if you want me to, I can contact a rescue group, have them send out someone trustworthy. Someone who wouldn't want to get on my bad side. Someone who knows about me. But I won't, if you don't want me to. Maybe you just super like this barn, and you're not here only because you don't have anywhere else to be. Let me just throw out there that most cryptid rescues are really interested in getting you back to your homeland. So if you wanna get back to a more arid climate, this is your chance. Otherwise, good luck to you."

The manticore perked up slightly, ears and tail pricking forward as she set a paw deliberately on top of one of her new toys to make it crinkle. "…Home?" she asked with a wistful look around the barn. "You're sure?"

"On my eye," Jim swore, running a forefinger just under the darker.

"Send the rescue," the manticore said.

"Your change of heart seems rather abrupt," Spock said, ignoring the way Jim rolled his eyes. "How do we know you won't plan an ambush?"

The manticore climbed delicately into the box Jim had used to transport her crinkle balls, sitting upright to prevent its bursting at the seams. "He wouldn't cross something like that," she said with a pious sniff. "No one in our world would." She emphasized the possessive just enough to indicate what she thought of Spock's presence there.

"Hey," Jim scolded, "you be nice to both of us or nobody's coming to ship your ass back to the Mediterranean, got it? Spock's not from around here, he's still learning."

"Teach him better," the manticore suggested, distracting herself by trying to curl up in the box without destroying it.

Jim rolled his eyes again. "Whatever," he muttered. "We're gonna go now," he added to the manticore, who continued to ignore him. "Expect someone within the week." She didn't respond, and they left, back to the taxi to drive four hours to the house haunted by a ghost who demanded the silver spoon before he would "cross over".

"The manticore has a point," Spock pointed out nearly three hours into their drive.

"About what?" Jim asked around a wide yawn, leaning hard on Spock's shoulder like he would fall asleep at any moment.

"You should teach me more."

"Man," Jim grumbled, "have I not been—"

"About you."

Two-toned blue eyes flicked up to him. "Do you mean," he asked with a faint leer, "like, biblically, or—"

"I do not understand your reference," Spock interrupted, "but based on your expression, likely not. You are thirteen. Even were I interested at present, that is too young."

"You're only fifteen," Jim protested. "It's not that big a—"

"I know there's something you won't tell me, Jim," Spock interrupted. "I know you're hiding something you think is terrible. And I want to know what it is."

Jim let out a long sigh, finally letting his head rest on Spock's arm. "You don't though," he said softly. "You wouldn't like it, if you knew. It's better you don't."

"Better for whom?" Spock challenged. "Me? No. I wish to see. Perhaps it is better for you, as an act of self-preservation. But, Jim, I would know you. Bad and good. Has that not been obvious these three months? Since the beginning? You are my friend. I would have your thoughts. I would know you."

"You sure you don't mean that the way it sounds like you mean it?" Jim asked weakly, eyes locked straight ahead as blood filled his cheeks. He shook his head. "You only say that because you don't know—"

"How can I?" Spock challenged. "You will not let me learn."

"You'd hate it."

"I am Vulcan," Spock said. "Vulcans do not hate. It is illogical."

"You're human too," Jim pointed out. He shook his head again. "Look, let's finish with this ghost, get back to New York, maybe talk about it more calmly over, like, pho or something. We've got time. I'm not saying yes," he stressed, flashing Spock a serious, if brief, frown. "I'm saying…I'm saying maybe. Let's think about it a bit more first though."

From Jim, that was as good as a yes. Better, since now it would turn in his mind until he couldn't resist at least trying. He would want to know what Spock meant by knowing, by having his thoughts. Would possibly even want to know Spock in return. Jim had so few connections with others, so unlike the majority of Terrans Spock had met in the past, each with a sprawling web of family and friends and acquaintances. He must surely be hungry for more. In fact, Jim was charming and clever and lovely, by Terran standards. By many standards.

Why did he not have more?

Spock curled his hands together in his lap in defense against the urge to reach over and touch Jim, the bare skin of his hands or throat or face. He could wait. Soon enough, nothing would stand between them, no measure of secret or confusion.

He could wait.

…

Kit yowled at them for almost ten minutes when they got back. "Do you know what it took to keep all this sage lit?" she cried as they offered the spoon to the ghost, who took it with a smile and faded into nothing, leaving the spoon to drop to the ground.

"Anti-climactic," Jim observed sourly, already sending a message to the family (friends of friends of Donna's, who offered a fine, rare whisky as payment) that their house was safe again.

"I don't have thumbs!" Kit continued to rant. "Once the pilot light on the stove went out I had to get creative!"

"I got you this," Jim said, pulling a crinkle ball out of his pocket to offer her.

"Do you think my outrage is that easy to satisfy?" she demanded, swatting the ball out of his hand and immediately giving chase. "I'm not done with my speech!" she said from beneath the table.

"Okay," Jim said to Spock, who blinked at him.

"Okay?" he echoed as he tried to figure out what Jim could mean.

Jim nodded. "When we get back to New York. Okay. You can…whatever. To know. We can do it."

"Ew," said Kit around the crinkle ball.

Spock's hand tingled in deeply un-Vulcan anticipation. Or, rather, the depth of the yearning was very Vulcan. His lack of control over it seemed slightly concerning, though not enough to turn him from his course.

"Okay," Spock said. He knelt to gather Kit into his arms and led the way back to the car.

The taxi dropped everyone off at Jim and Kit's home. Jim paid the driver an exorbitant number of credits, leaving a tip so generous several of the snakes (though not the driver) grinned in delight. Jim let Kit into the house, gave the bottle of whiskey and a rundown to Donna to pass on to the Doyles, and gestured for Spock to follow him back to the nearest rail station. They took assorted public transit vehicles back into the heart of New York. Once they were in a rather rundown area, Jim walked him through a fast food establishment for a take-out dinner, then led them to an abandoned church.

"It's kind of tradition," he said, setting up a makeshift picnic near the front where the setting sun could shine down on them from several holes in the ceiling. "Last time a big revelation thing went down, it was here. And that worked out, so. Here we are." Jim shook some French fries out onto an unfolded napkin. "Eat up, I guess. Better not to know on an empty stomach. There's a salad somewhere in here too."

"Yes," Spock agreed dryly, having already removed the salad from its bag. "I was there when you purchased the food, Jim."

Jim sighed shakily, eyes on the cheeseburger held, partially unwrapped, in his hands. "Yeah, well." He began eating his food without further explanation.

"If you would rather not do this," Spock said, "we will not. Even if you are simply unsure, we will not. Perhaps I have placed too much pressure on you; I do not want you to be reluctant. This would be a deeply personal connection. There must be no coercion. It is all right, Jim." He opened his salad. "We will eat and go home. As you said earlier, we have time. Perhaps you will never wish to meld with me. That is well within your rights."

"Meld," Jim said around his burger, shooting Spock a curious glance. "Is that what you want to do?"

Spock blinked and swallowed his mouthful of greens. "Yes. Did I not specify?"

Jim shook his head.

"I am Vulcan," Spock pointed out. "Surely you know something of our abilities?"

"I could tell you a lot about vampires," Jim said, grabbing a few fries from their pile. "Or werewolves, or ghosts, or, like, a lot of other weird Earth creatures. I never really got around to off-world stuff. I noticed you're pretty strong. Does it have something to do with that?"

"Only so far as they both relate to differences in our biology." Spock frowned at his salad. "I apologize," he said. "I made a rather large assumption, for which I am wholly to blame. Why would you agree to come, if you did not know what I meant?"

Jim gestured vaguely with his cheeseburger. "Man, you know me. Curious to a fault. And, I figure, if it's something you wanna do, how bad can it be? Not sure if you noticed, Spock, but you're pretty awesome. I don't think you could suggest something I'd hate, and I'll try anything once. Well," he amended, "not anything anything. Don't wanna get bit by a werewolf or a vampire or be mummified or—"

"Vulcans," Spock interrupted him, "are touch telepaths."

"Really?" Jim asked. "Is that what that is? That, y'know." He wiggled his fingers at Spock in a gesture that defied interpretation.

"Really," Spock agreed, ignoring the rest of it. "Light touches provide surface details, generally pertaining to emotional states."

"Wait," Jim protested, "is that how you knew, with the nosferatu? You could tell it was messing with my mind because you were keeping pressure on the cut on my arm? You saw my emotional state, or whatever, through that?"

Spock nodded. "Further, I could tell when you transitioned from being controlled to… Honestly," he admitted, "I do not know what it was. There is something that rose in you to battle the control it exerted over your mind. It…consumed, I suppose, the connection, and I believe would have gone further, had you not pulled it back."

Jim's mouth was pressed into a thin, pale line. "You sensed that, huh."

"I have seen it several times," Spock said, picking out a cherry tomato to offer Jim, who ate it with a small, grateful smile. "Even from our first meeting. Do you remember? You carried me around for some time in your bare hands."

"Oh man," Jim groaned dramatically. "You were such a cute frog though. Could you tell I thought you were a cute frog?"

Spock felt his brow furrow and the tips of his ears flush pale green. "How can a frog be cute?"

"You were so serious," Jim laughed.

"I am Vulcan," Spock reminded him.

Jim just shook his head. "It's more than that, I think. Anyway, so you couldn't tell I thought you were the cutest frog ever. What did you sense?"

"When we were in the back room with the unnamed creature," Spock reminded him, "and I was about to ask—"

"Oh," Jim said, expression and tone equally flat. "I didn't think you'd—Why are you still here?" he asked, frustrated now as he picked at the seeds on his cheeseburger bun. "If you sensed or saw or…experienced that, or whatever. Why didn't you run at the first chance?"

"Why would I run?" Spock wondered, pushing his plastic fork through the remaining salad. "You never posed any threat to me. Rather, you protected me when I was extremely vulnerable, at no benefit to yourself. Whatever the darkness in you is, wherever it came from, you only touched it twice I could tell: Once to stop me from indebting myself to the creature, once to break the spell on the door to the witches' lounge so we could reach my mother. Who, I am sure, engineered her lesson that day at least in part so we would meet."

"You think so?" Jim asked wistfully. "You think she'd do that for someone like me?"

"I think she did it for both of us," Spock said. "Why do you persist in categorizing yourself as something awful?"

Jim hesitated, then glanced at Spock. He looked around nervously before drawing a deep breath. "I wasn't born like this," he said, gesturing to his darker left eye. "They used to match and everything. Something…happened. I made a choice, when I was little, and it was—" His mouth twisted bitterly. "The wrong one. Kit saved me from making it worse, but I got this eye before she could—

"There are repercussions," Jim said, shaking his head sharply. "I don't know if they'll get worse with time. It's stronger than it was back then, but I don't know if it'll keep getting stronger or if it'll, like, level out. I have control of it. Now, anyway. If it keeps getting stronger—Well. We'll see."

"And what was it?" Spock asked, low and coaxing. "What happened that gave you the eye?"

"The button," Jim whispered. He looked over at Spock, unsure and determined. "Tell me more about the meld."

"If I touch you here," Spock said, dropping the salad to press his fingers to Jim's psy-points, "I can build a link between us. It is called a mind meld. I will see you, and you, in turn, will see me. There is no closer way to be together as people."

Jim sucked in a breath. A deep yearning, marked through with unusual hunger, burned through Spock where he was touching Jim. "It might be dangerous," the Terran said. "I don't know what she did. I don't know what she left. You could get hurt."

"I am most skilled at this," Spock reassured him, letting his thumb stroke over Jim's soft, warm skin. "I exceed the capabilities of all my peers. With training, I could be better still. You will not hurt me, Jim. And I will not hurt you. What do you wish to do?"

Blue eyes slid closed. Terran hands lifted to wrap around sensitive Vulcan wrists. Jim pressed his face into Spock's hold. "Do it," he murmured.

"My mind to your mind," Spock said, reaching out to build the link between them. "My thoughts to your thoughts."

At first, everything looked and felt the way Spock expected. Each mind was unique, but consciousness was built along patterns. Jim's patterns twisted and flourished in Spock's sight, vibrant in a way no Vulcan mind was. His delight lit the shared space between them, curiosity and joy spilling over into Spock's mind, leaping between observation and speculation and certainty, seeking to know and be known. All of Jim was golden and bright and with Spock.

Except.

Tendrils reached through Jim's mind, long and thin like needles, like knives. They cut out from a distant, gaping black circle, pierced through and woven four times, greatly resembling—

A button.

A round, jagged button of darkness, drinking in Jim's light in slow, steady gulps, leaving behind more grasping lines of attack. Jim's mind had built protections against the spread. Spock could see how even now he tapped the shadows for strength he turned against it, blocking it up as best he could. Some of the dams were cracked; doubtless this was how Jim siphoned power to threaten or attack his enemies, to protect those under his care. With each effort, he broke his walls a little further.

The darkness was winning. Slow. Inexorable. If Jim did not learn how better to fashion his blockades, or if he could not break off the darkness at its source, he would be lost to it. Maybe in ten years. Maybe in five.

But it would happen.

Jim's mind dimmed and shuttered, closing down around Spock's realization.

I told you, he whispered through every corner of Spock. I told you it was better not to know.

Knowledge is preferable to ignorance, Spock thought back at him, wrapping his conviction around Jim's retreating trust. Where did you get the button?

I let her, Jim replied, echoing faintly in the dark places, a child's voice underscoring what Spock was used to. I let her sew the button.

Why?

I thought she would love me.

Did she?

Jim's memory of the event flooded around them, too fast and fractured to make sense, flashes of a woman with button eyes smiling at Jim, warm and kind and all of it a lie. Spock saw the box she offered him, packed brightly and containing two glossy black buttons and a silver needle. Jim reached for the box and—

Spock gasped, thrown back from Jim by the force of his refusal to let Spock see any more. They sat by each other, panting, Spock watching Jim while Jim dug the heels of his shaking hands into his eyes.

"That's enough," Jim said hoarsely. "There's no point in seeing any more."

"There is," Spock insisted. "If I knew what—"

"No." Jim's voice broke on the word. "That's—that's enough."

Oh. Jim couldn't take anymore. Well, the scene had appeared to be fairly traumatic. That certainly made sense. "All right," Spock said, reaching out to touch one of Jim's knees. It trembled under his hand but did not pull away. "We will stop. Thank you, Jim. You shared quite generously. I have not ever touched a mind like yours before."

"Broken?" Jim spat.

Spock shook Jim's knee. "Resonate. We suit each other well. Sometime in the future, when you are recovered, I would like to try again."

Jim lowered his hands to stare at Spock. "You're joking."

"I am Vulcan," Spock reminded him. "We do not joke."

"Then you're crazy. Who would want to see that again?" Jim's hands fluttered around his own chest. "I don't want to see it again!"

"It was educational," Spock protested.

"Educational," Jim said faintly. He shook his head, not in disagreement so much as disbelief. "I'm taking you back to your hotel. This is sleep deprivation talking or something. You clearly need some rest."

"Yes," Spock agreed, gathering their trash. Jim helped him consolidate it all into a single bag, which he gripped tight as they stood. "I believe we should both rest, perhaps for a day or two, and reconvene to discuss what we saw."

"I know what I saw," Jim complained, fist white-knuckled around the bag. "I was there."

"Even still," Spock insisted. He rose fluidly, then extended a hand to help Jim up. Jim hesitated for only a moment before accepting it. The Terran's emotions raged beneath his skin like a storm in the desert, wild and destructive. Spock pushed his own calm at Jim, trying to guide him back to equilibrium.

Jim withdrew his hand. "Let's go," he said, leading the way back to the subway.

The trip back to the hotel was silent. Jim continued to storm, and Spock was forced to let him. When they reached the hotel, before stepping through the doors, Spock turned to settle a firm look on Jim. "I am not afraid," he said. "I do not regret sharing this experience with you. For now, you may leave, and find solace and calm in your own way. But I will see you again, Jim."

"You say that now," Jim said, eyes locked on Spock's left shoulder, his own arms crossed tight across his chest. "Wait until you've had some time to think it over."

Spock stepped close again to press his hand to the cross of Jim's wrists, sharing with Jim the strength of his own conviction. "My opinion will not change," he said, and watched Jim's struggle to believe him. "You are my friend, Jim. I will see you in a few days."

Jim let out a long breath. "A few days," he agreed. Spock stepped back, watched Jim turn back toward the subway, and let him go.

For now.

…

When he got back up to his floor, the suite he shared with his parents was alive with activity. Amanda met him at the door with a PADD displaying an itinerary for travel from Earth to Vulcan.

Their itinerary.

"This is for tomorrow morning," Spock said.

"Yes," Amanda agreed, gentle with compassion.

"I see." Spock handed the PADD back then folded his hands carefully at the small of his back. "Father's business ended more abruptly than I concluded it would."

"I asked Sarek to give us more time," Amanda said, brushing her fingers over Spock's cheek in a fleeting, regretful caress. "He would not be persuaded. I think he might be…concerned about the time you've spent away from home and your studies."

"He does not like how often I am gone," Spock corrected her. "Let us be honest, Mother. We both know my grades in the distance courses have shown no decline from what they were on Vulcan. In fact, my overall quality of work has gone up. He does not approve of my activities around my schooling. Despite not ever having met him, he does not approve of Jim."

"I won't defend him to you," Amanda said through a sigh. "Your father loves you; his manner of showing it can be less than ideal. What will you do?"

"An excellent question," he said, meeting her eyes. "What will I do, Mother?"

Amanda looked surprised. "In all the time since you learned about me," she said softly, "you've never asked. Why now?"

"This is important," Spock said. "I'm sure you see my goals in relation to Jim. No doubt the change in my ambitions regarding my future was at least part of the reason you arranged our introduction in the first place."

"Yes," she agreed, unashamed. "You shine so much more brightly by his side, and he in your company. Yours is a destiny beyond my control, beyond anyone's control. Except, perhaps, your own. I have no insight for you. You must decide: What will you do?"

"I must find a way to contact him." Spock thought back to Jim's fear from earlier that night, his bone-deep belief that Spock would leave. "He will not understand." A flare of irritation curled through Spock's control. Nor, he did not say, should he have to.

Unfortunately, Spock's options for reaching Jim were few. Jim carried no PADD or other communication devices, claiming they did not "like him". If the Hendersons had any method of contact more modern than a rotary phone, Spock had never seen it, and he had certainly never been given the number. He knew the general way to Jim's house, but not with enough confidence to attempt public transit on his own. Jim would never come to the hotel in enough time to find a letter. The cleaning staff, efficient to a fault, would have their suite in pristine order within an hour of their leaving. Jim would not think to look for him for at least a few days.

Still, he must try.

Spock turned to leave the hotel room again, PADD tucked under one arm. He would find his way back to Jim's house. He would explain.

Amanda reached out to grip his wrist and abruptly drew close by his side. "You will only be able to succeed at one battle," she murmured. "The one now, or the one later. I cannot tell you which to fight. Know, my son, that you must chose."

Before Spock could ask what she meant, Sarek appeared in the doorway to the master bedroom. He studied Spock with the perfect calm of an adult Vulcan. "Spock," he said. "I see your mother has informed you of our morning schedule. It is appropriate that you have returned from your…day out. Pack your belongings in preparation of our return to Vulcan."

"Affirmative, Father," Spock said, turning to face him with both hands clasped around the PADD behind his back. "First there is an errand I must complete. It should take no more than an hour and have no impact upon my readiness for tomorrow's journey."

Sarek's calm expression deepened into disapproval. "You seek out the Terran male. His company is beneath yours," Father said, firm and certain as though he had actually ever so much as met Jim.

"I disagree," Spock said with as much deference as he could manage. "He has gone well out of his way to teach me a number of Terran customs that have made my experiences in this city far richer than they would have been were I left here on my own. Though he is young, the depth and breadth of his knowledge is nothing less than exemplary. I owe him notice of my leave."

"You owe him nothing," Sarek replied immediately. "Your human emotions, encouraged by too much exposure to this boy, are overcoming you. We must return to Vulcan immediately. You will have no further contact with him."

"I will," Spock insisted, taking a half step forward, anger hot under his heart.

Amanda's hand touched his arm again.

His statement was true: Spock would have further contact with Jim. Amanda, a seer, had confirmed it. Spock would fight his father and win, and see Jim again, for whatever time was left to them.

Was now the time he should fight for?

If he won this fight and went to Jim, his father would find him, eventually. Spock was fifteen; he could not stay on Earth without his parents. Amanda said two fights would happen, and only one was winnable. So was this the fight worth having? With it reward stretching out only a few days at most?

Spock could go with them. He could surrender this fight, go back to Vulcan. He could grow strong and independent. Later, as an adult, he could fight his father again. If he pretended now to listen, that fight could have a longer impact. Spock could return to Earth, somehow, and live here. With Jim. For as long as they both lived.

That would mean leaving Earth without telling Jim, who would not understand the wordless separation. Worse, he would read intentions into it that did not exist. He would never know how Spock felt, having to abandon him so soon after the meld, how it tore at him behind his shield. It would be years before Spock could return. He would have to spend that time rearranging his whole life, his goals assessed and put into entirely different configurations. Three years stretched between him and adulthood. He had only that time to put his affairs on Vulcan in order.

"You will not," his father said, bringing Spock's attention back to the fight at hand.

Spock put his faith in his mother, putting his hand over hers so she would feel his resolve underscoring the lies he wove for his father's sake. "Perhaps it is for the best," Spock said, mind whirling. "I am sure Jim will understand."

Amanda inclined her head, expression serene, sorrow and pride rushing through their familial bond. "As you say, my son." She gestured toward his private rooms. "Most of our belongings have already been packed by the moving crew. I took the liberty of insisting they leave your room alone. You have a lot of work to do."

Spock's room was filled with the trinkets and mementos of his time with Jim, none of which he wanted outsider people to witness. He nodded his thanks. "Consider it done."

In the morning, they left.

---

For once, Jim was himself. The hungry thing in his dreams was not a shadow of the deeper darkness in himself but its own creature. It prowled in empty alleyways of an unfinished town. Half-built houses and storefronts lined dirt roads not yet paved smooth. The creature in his dream was looking for food but there was none yet. It knew the houses would attract prey soon, and until then it would have to content itself with plans for how best to nurture that prey to full, ripe terror.

The hungry thing noticed him. Layers of it pulled back to reveal rows upon rows of sharp, jagged teeth in the parody of a smile. "The seer is right," it said to him, mouth unmoving, voice snarling out of a deep place in its body. "You do not have to come here. Leave it to me, child. There is nothing you can do to stop my feeding. I will have them, whether you are here or not. This star is my mother; all the worlds of Tarsus are my hunting ground. You should have looked for me before you settled.

"But come, if you will." Its jaw creaked open, displaying a bottomless maw seething with hunger. "I will have you too, you and your power. The Beldam's half breed child—you will make a sweet dessert."

The creature leapt forward, mouth yearning for him.

Jim jerked awake with a cry, throwing himself out of bed and onto the floor in his efforts to get away. His heart raced under the frantic gasping of his lungs.

"Jim!" Kit leapt onto the floor beside him, tail lashing as she nudged her nose against his cheek. "Are you alright? What happened!"

"Tarsus," he gasped. "The thing—the hungry thing, it said Tarsus." He turned to Kit, eyes wild. "Do you know what Tarsus is?"

She shook her head quickly. "No, Jim. I've never heard of it. Let's get Donna and Dave, they'll know!"

"No." Jim groaned, wrapping his arms around his stomach and leaning forward to rest his burning forehead on the cool wood flooring. "They don't know about the dreams. How would I explain why I want to know?"

Kit made an impatient sound. "Don't be stupid, Jim, of course they know you're having bad dreams! Donna is a vampire; Dave is a werewolf. They've smelt your distress for months! Ask them about Tarsus. Tell them about the dreams. Get some advice, for goodness sake! You can't keep going on like this!"

Before Jim could decide either way, the door to his room slid open. Donna and Dave circled the bed to kneel on either side of him, pulling him into a long, firm family hug. "Tell us," Donna implored.

"We will do everything in our power to help you," Dave added, stroking Jim's hair gently. "First, you must tell us."

Jim did.

He described every dark, ravenous dream he'd had in the last few months, explaining the constant, growing sense that he was needed somewhere. The stars called to him, not as a savior of a distant world but as an accomplice to the creature that said it wanted to eat a world. The Beldam wanted to have a share in the feast, but the Beldam was dead, living now only in the button she would have used to devour Jim.

Now the creature on that distant world had seen Jim. Recognized him. Jim could stay on Earth and hide from it. He could seek it out and try to stop it. Either way, some part of him would be lost.

"I can't leave all those people to die," he whispered over the mug of hot chocolate Dave had dragged him down to the kitchen to drink. "But the creature said it would eat me, and I believe it." Tears filled his eyes, no matter how hard he fought against them. "I don't want to be eaten. I don't want them to be eaten. I don't know what to do."

"Here's a step one," Donna said gently. "For now, try to go back to bed. Dave and I will figure out what Tarsus is tomorrow, and we can decide from there."

"Tarsus is a star," Jim said without looking up. "The creature must be on one of its planets. People aren't done settling yet, so it must be a new colony world. The list of prospective colonies get published in an official Star Fleet quarterly periodical. We could search the database and know within seconds."

"Yes," Donna agreed with fond exasperation, flicking a dehydrated marshmallow at him, "but that's not your job, Jim. We're still your guardians; we can do the figuring out for you. Give us a day, okay? Do something fun tomorrow. We'll talk about it over dinner."

Jim got up to set his empty hot chocolate mug in the sink. "Okay," he said. "Sounds good. I'll try to go back to bed."

Dave and Donna tucked him in like they hadn't since he declared himself too old more than a year ago. Jim let them, waiting patiently for the sound of them settling back in their own room.

Then he left, Kit perched on his shoulders complaining about how stupid he was.

It took only about twenty minutes to get to Spock's building, then another five to sneak up to the suite where the ambassador's family was staying. Jim's initial plan had been to knock, but the door was already ajar. The muted whirring of a half dozen cleaner bots leaked out into the hallway. An unsettled feeling began turning in Jim's stomach. He pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Everything was gone.

The cleaner bots worked industriously over every generic surface of the room. No trace of Spock or his family remained, not the shoes by the door, not the strange Vulcan art. Jim picked his way around the bots to check Spock's room.

Empty.

They were gone.

Something sharp twisted in Jim's chest.

Spock was gone. Without so much as a note or a call or—anything. He was gone. Fled.

Just as Jim had predicted he would.

They never should have melded. If Spock had never seen the ugly black of Jim's mind, he might have stayed. Or at least said goodbye, or told the lobby staff to pass a message along, or—

But he hadn't. Spock had seen Jim's mind and cut him out like cancer.

"Bot," Jim whispered, hardly noticing when all the units within hearing distance paused in their tasks to attend his request. "How long has this room been unoccupied."

"Eighteen hours," the bots replied as one. "Additional query or resume task?"

"Resume task," Kit said when Jim's silence threatened to stretch out into eternity. "We don't know why he left," she murmured into Jim's ear once the whirring began again. "We don't know why he didn't leave a message. You can't assume—"

"It doesn't matter," Jim interrupted.

Kit's ears folded back uncertainly. "…Why not?"

"One of us would have had to say goodbye soon anyway. This is better. Cleaner. Now we're not the ones who have to leave first."

"Jim." Kit's voice shook with growing fear. "Why would we need to say goodbye, Jim? Where are we going."

Jim turned on his heel, marching them out of the room, jaw locked with determination. "Because we're going too, Kit. Not to Vulcan.

"To Tarsus."

So they answered the call and went. They slayed the hungry monster and lived.

And nothing was ever the same.