Amazingly, there's no smut in this chapter. Pissed-off Vulcans and worried humans, but a distinct lack of smut.

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Kirk hurt like hell

At some point a few more Romulans had shown up, apparently for the sole purpose of kicking seven different kinds of crap out of him, and he'd finally blacked out.

When he came to, he found himself in a small, cramped cell, a section of walled-off cargo hold, along with Spock, Captain Pike, and Bones--Bones, who was trying to clean up his various lacerations with what little tools he had available. Spock had one arm in an improvised sling, but it was his expression that halted Kirk cold. Never in his life had he seen such complete, barely-contained rage, and the fact that it was on the face of a Vulcan just made it so much worse. Romulans, yeah, they were easy to piss off--as he knew all too well, now--but Spock…a pissed-off Vulcan was a hell of a lot scarier. Kirk looked from his face to his arm and back again, and comprehension clicked in his muzzy, aching head.

Uhura.

It didn't take a genius to figure out why Nero had taken her, or where Spock had been dragged off later. Kirk hadn't had any idea there had been anything between the two, but why else would Spock be the one who had to…go with? He'd be enraged if it was any crew member, true, but there was something extra in the murderous glint in his eyes--something definitely personal. Something that made Kirk, normally so self-assured and almost arrogant, shudder.

Spock must have noticed, for he turned his head and looked at him. His face was so still, set and hard as stone, green-white as marble.

"Where did they go?" Kirk asked, not bothering with preliminaries.

Spock didn't blink. "I do not know," he said flatly, and looked away.

Kirk grunted as he tried to sit up, an action that sent fire stabbing in what felt like every agonized joint in his body. "Well, we've gotta find out," he said, wincing.

"Dammit, Jim, hold still," Bones demanded. "What good would that do, anyway?"

"Well, we have to go save her, don't we?" Kirk asked, ignoring him.

"Nyota is no, as you would say, damsel in distress," Spock said softly. "Given the opportunity, she will most surely save herself." He ought to know; he'd touched her mind more than once. She was fully capable of taking care of herself, of watching and waiting and seizing the first chance she could get; tough, competent, and stronger than she knew. She needed no--what was the Terran phrase? No knight in shining armor to ride to her rescue. But that didn't make him feel any better, because who he who knew her so well knew just what sort of damage this would do to her psyche. She wasn't foolhardy like Kirk; she'd know…to be patient, to wait for her opportunity, but what Nero would surely do to her in the meantime…the Romulan was half-crazy, but he wasn't stupid. Who knew how long it might be before he slipped up? And in the meantime he'd be slowly destroying the one Spock loved above all else. Oh, he could see why Kirk would want to charge in, phasers blazing, but in the end that would do Nyota no favors. Nero had taken her strength, her control, had shredded her dignity, and she was human--by human logic she would require her own vengeance. He couldn't mete it out for her, and Kirk certainly couldn't, either.

"So what, we just sit here?" Kirk demanded, incredulous. "Okay, so we can't go rescue her, but maybe we can do something to give her that chance, right? Come on, if we get out we can give Nero too many problems to ignore."

"You definitely could," Bones muttered.

"Where is everybody else, anyway?" Kirk asked, wincing again as Bones grabbed his hand and bent two of his fingers back into place with a sickening crack. Kirk yelped.

"You could've given me some warning," he grumbled, scowling.

"Don't be an infant," Bones, returned, resetting another one and ignoring Kirk's strangled protest.

"I don't know where everyone else is," Pike said, his voice a little slurred. "I think they separated us all over the ship. Anyway, Cadet, how are we supposed to get out?" He gave Kirk a tired smile. "You're creative, you figure it out. And get some weapons while you're at it."

"Not funny, sir," Kirk said, stung.

Pike fixed him with steady eyes. "I'm not joking. You beat the Kobayashi Maru, Kirk; you'd better be able to beat this."

Kirk leaned against the cold wall, looking at him in something like disbelief. He wondered if whatever Nero had given him had affected his Captain's brain. "Yeah, but I cheated," he said at last.

"I'd call it 'creative problem solving'," Pike said, with another tired smile. "Between you and Spock--if you can't get us out of here, I'm going to be very disappointed."

"So no pressure," Kirk muttered, still disbelieving. He glanced at Spock. "You willing to try?"

Spock paused, thoughtful. "I estimate we have less than a twenty percent chance of escaping this cell,' he said, "and five point three percent of causing enough of a diversion to be of any use. Such an attempt would be illogical, but," and here there was a very human glint in his eye, "I do not care." The sudden ferocity in his voice made Kirk twitch.

"…Oookay then," he said. "We need a plan. Other than just punching Romulans," he added, grimacing.

Spock arched an eyebrow. "Indeed," he said. "Perhaps you should have thought of that before they beat you unconscious."

McCoy tried not to snort, and failed.

"Shut up," Kirk said, to the world at large. "All right, Spock, you've got to be better at planning than I am--"

"It would be difficult to be worse," Spock observed.

"--so plan," he finished. "I'm going to see if the Romulans were considerate enough to leave us anything useful."

It didn't take him long to look. Their makeshift prison really was tiny, and dark, without even any dust on the floor. There were a few cracks in the walls, but though he could get his fingers into them he could do no more. Damn. The bars on the door were much too solid even for Vulcan strength--figured, since they were on a Romulan ship--but before he could get too frustrated, someone else showed up.

It was Uhura.

Kirk hadn't known what to expect, but it wasn't this--this woman with a face carved out of stone, a face that defied pity. He could only imagine what had happened to her uniform; what she was wearing now had to have come from one of the Narada's female crew, the functional black that almost seemed like the Romulan uniform. She'd been accompanied by a guard, but he left her alone when she glared at him. Her eyes made Kirk swallow--they alone showed any animation, filled with anger and something like grief. They burned.

She reached in through the bars, and Spock stood to take her hand. The look on his face was like nothing Kirk had ever seen, either, and when Spock extended his other hand to touch her forehead, Kirk looked away. Even he could recognize a private moment when it was that blatant.

I brought you this. Uhura's expression might be composed, Spock thought , but her mind didn't match it. He knew why she wouldn't say anything aloud; the guard surely wouldn't have gone far. I don't know how much good it will do, but maybe you can use it to try to get out. I don't know where the others are yet, but if I find out I'll try to tell you.

Are you all right? he asked, when she pressed something into his free hand--something small and hard, cold metal.

She paused. No, she said, honestly, but I'll live, and I'll help you as soon as I can. We will get out of here. She leaned in to kiss him through the bars, and then she and the guard were gone, leaving Spock both more and less desolate than before. She was alive and unhurt, but that hardness of expression was not the Nyota he knew. He hated---hated with a depth no human could be capable of--that she had to be so, that she had to draw so much on the strength he knew was there. How long would it last, he wondered? She hadn't let him past her surface thoughts, but he didn't need to see deeper to sense the horrible churning turmoil in her mind. He didn't want to know what else that damned Romulan had done to her, to make her retreat so deeply into her own head--as far as she, a human, could go.

Abruptly he became aware of the others, and found that while Kirk and McCoy were carefully averting their eyes, Captain Pike was looking at him with inexpressible compassion.

"She's tough," he said. "And you are, too. Don't let that bastard make you think otherwise."

Privately, Sock wondered if he was 'tough' enough. In less than a day he'd lost his mother, his planet, and now this--now this, as Kirk would likely say, bullshit. It would have been a lot to heap on a true Vulcan, and Spock was so permanently conflicted already that he was unsure he would be equal to the task he now faced, whatever it would turn out to be.

But he had no choice, did he? It was try or die, and he did not intend to die.

He glanced down at the thing in his hand. It was a thin sliver of metal, unrecognizable--flat steel, perhaps four inches long, with a slightly serrated edge. Not sharp enough to be a knife--if it had been, Nyota would probably have kept it, he thought grimly--but with a tapered point that ended in something like the flat head of a screwdriver. Hmm. Where she'd got it, or how, Spock didn't know, but surely it could be useful somehow. And he'd better figure out how, since the Captain was largely incapacitated, McCoy had his hands full dealing with said incapacitation, and Kirk certainly wasn't going to be any use in that sense.

He had…enthusiasm, though--that much Spock had to admit--and a brain, even if it often seemed like he didn't want to use it. Spock had looked up his aptitude scores once he'd found the subroutine Kirk had programmed into the Kobayashi Maru, and had been, in spite of himself, impressed. The man had a genius-level IQ--it was simply unfortunate he seemed almost entirely lacking in common sense. He was old enough now by human standards to know better, though it was true humans seemed to reach adult maturity rather later than Vulcans--especially human males. There was probably a paper in that somewhere, whenever they got out of here.

But that was the point--Kirk's conviction that they would get out was so form it was contagious, overriding many of Spock's more logical misgivings. What foundation that conviction had was constructed almost entirely on metaphorical sand, but that wasn't stopping this seemingly crazily optimistic young man. His father would surely disapprove, but Spock found it oddly…comforting.

"Once we're out, we've got to try to get everyone back to the Enterprise." Kirk was pacing the small cell, trying not to trip over Pike's outstretched feet.

"Yeah, if they haven't destroyed it already," McCoy said.

"They will not have." Spock raised an eyebrow at McCoy's questioning look. "Nero appears to have a singular fixation on the Enterprise, presumably from whatever experience he has had with it in the future. Romulus is a society that values status; very likely he will consider it a trophy."

"Never thought Romulan pride would come in handy," Pike grunted, shaking his head. "So we get everyone, get the Enterprise, hope Cadet Uhura either kills Nero or makes him wish she had, and get out. You two better figure out how we do that."

Spock winced internally at the thought of Nyota killing Nero. Certainly she Iwanted/I to, but she was no murderer; whatever satisfaction it might give her, it would also cause even more harm to her mind once the danger had passed. Which was partly why he wanted very much to do it for her. The fact that he himself had more than sufficient personal reason to want to snap Nero's neck was best left uncontemplated, at least for now.

"You think she could do that?" Kirk asked, watching him closely. "Kill Nero?"

Spock actually sighed, and nodded. "She could. Aside from the military training she has received in the Academy, she is…angry. Very, very angry." More than that he would not say, and Kirk was wise enough not to ask. Uhura wasn't the only one who was angry, he thought.

Still, trust it not to cloud a Vulcan's mind entirely. Spock might be obnoxious as hell at times, but Kirk couldn't help but feel sorry for him--and feel a grudging admiration for how well he was bearing up. If it had been Kirk's girlfriend, he'd probably already have gotten himself killed trying to fight through every damn one of the Romulans to get to her, which would be…a little counterproductive. Then again (though Kirk would never admit this, even to himself) he wasn't likely to ever get a girlfriend like Uhura, or at least not until he'd done some serious growing up.

"Something so uncertain precludes the possibility of a complicated plan," Spock said suddenly, surprising him, "therefore I suggest we do not try. There are too many variables we cannot account for."

"So what're you saying?" Kirk asked. "We just break out and run around shooting people?"

Another eyebrow. "I am saying one of us will need to cause a diversion to allow the other time to search for the rest of the crew. That should be well within your capabilities, Cadet."

McCoy snorted again.

"And how do you suggest I do that?" Kirk asked, with a glower at Bones.

Spock's expression did not change. "Cheat," he said dryly.

"You got it," Kirk muttered, and wondered how the hell he was going to do that. Like seemingly everything else he did, he'd just have to make it up as he went along.

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Kirk and Spock will have much more to do once they actually get out of that cell, and Kirk especially can be very…Kirk-like. Next up is Nero, God help us all.