Once, when Spock was eleven years old, he had spent a week with cousins in New York. His parents were visiting Earth and Amanda had persuaded Sarek that Spock should use the time to get to know his human cousins. Amanda's brother had three children, a little older than Spock, a boy and two girls, who had clearly been tutored to within an inch of their lives about what to say and what not to say to their oddly-coloured cousin. Both the children and their parents were extremely kind to Spock, but he remembered the vacation not for any pleasure in the experience but for the fact that he made some important discoveries during his week in their house.
Discovery One: kindness can be just as distancing a thing as unkindness, if it is motivated by duty and unaccompanied by warmth.
Discovery Two: the absence of the familiar is regrettable, even when it is an unkind familiar. Spock's childhood had been a lonely one, and had contained rather too many instances of illogical bullying and abuse from contemporaries who indulged in the age-old classroom habit of picking on the unusual within the peer group. Nevertheless, isolated within the lonely impersonal kindness of his human family, Spock found himself missing the lonely bullying of his Vulcan home.
Discovery Three: none of this actually constituted homesickness. Spock knew this because humans rarely account for Vulcan hearing, even when they have been informed that it is more acute than the human variety. Late one night, he overheard his aunt say to his uncle "Spock seems quiet, though the kids seem to be including him pretty much – reckon he's homesick?" and heard his uncle reply "Don't worry, honey – I think you can rely on the fact that Vulcans don't get homesick. He knows he's going home next week; he'll focus on the logic of the situation."
Sitting in his quarters on the Seleya, Spock knew, therefore, that he was not homesick. But the logic of the situation escaped him.
Just as Vulcans do not get homesick, they do not experience astonishment. Nevertheless, Spock admitted to himself, within the quiet of his room, that it had been with astonishing ease and rapidity that he had been stripped of everything that was familiar or of value in his life. Although he had been present – more than present, he had actually instigated the events responsible for this transformation – he still woke up every morning and reached for an awareness of a ship, of a crew, of a captain who were no longer there, and went to bed every evening with not the slightest sense that the feeling of displacement had eased an iota. He had, for once in his life, no idea at all of the logic of the particular situation or how to focus on it. In all the arrangements and changes of the past weeks, Spock (who had said "I will take the assignment" to his father; and "I agree" to the VSA and to Kirk "My father has asked me to reconsider the Seleya posting") was responsible for one small act of rebellion, and one only. It was, he knew, of very little relevance to any but himself, and no one but the VSA knew of it in any event, but he had declined to accept his new role on anything other than temporary promotion and his formal title (unused by anyone) was "Acting Captain of the Seleya." To compensate for the fact that the title was unknown to any of the crew, Spock looked at himself in the mirror every morning in the head and addressed himself very quietly in those terms: "Acting Captain Spock" and knew himself to be entirely irrational. Nevertheless, that moment in front of the mirror was the end of a long, fragile string attaching him to Kirk and the Enterprise and he could not afford to let go. It was all he had.
He had expected to hear from Kirk and did not. That was the other indulgence he permitted himself every morning. The words "Acting Captain" and a swift check of the computer to look for messages from the Enterprise. There were none.
Entirely aside from the absence of Kirk himself, which was a phenomenon on which Spock attempted unsuccessfully to dwell as little as possible, he found himself profoundly uncomfortable within the role of command. "I do not wish to command", he had said, perhaps as many as thirty four times to Kirk and others, including with reference to his current assignment. Far from modesty or self effacement, that opinion had come from a place of deep self knowledge. Spock knew himself capable of efficient command but he also knew that it was not his gift – just as it was unquestionably Kirk's – and that the standard of the performance of his duties to Starfleet (which had been accompanied for many years with respect, accolades and the achievement of the impossible on a regular basis) would be very different given that the duties were now the duties of the Captain of the Seleya. Acting Captain of the Seleya.
He thought back often to his ill-fated leadership of the Galileo in the Murasaki 312 system. Kirk had made him take out considerable time after the incident, after they had finally reached Makus lll and got rid of Ferris. He had spent hours with Spock in his quarters, making him talk through what had happened. It had been one of those occasions when he had looked at Kirk, sitting across the room from him, endlessly listening, challenging, comforting (with a knowledge of Spock's perspective and of his needs which were breathtaking for being, to Spock's knowledge, unique among the entirety of Spock's acquaintances) – looked at Kirk and thought, quite distinctly, that he loved Kirk, that what he felt for him was not collegiality or friendship but something deeper, something permanent, something at Spock's core. He had allowed Kirk to persuade him of the logic that the substitution for his leadership of another's would be unlikely to have prevented Latimer's death, but he knew (and Kirk gave him the respect of not disagreeing) that his failure had been in not bringing the crew with him, as he had known Kirk himself would have done. Then, the issue had been his maintenance of the Vulcan mode as leader of six humans on an emotional edge; on the Seleya, he knew that the human elements of his character were bound to sabotage his leadership of an all-Vulcan crew. But above and beyond all these things was the fact of leadership and the fact that, in relation to any crew, it was simply not where he actually excelled. And where he excelled was in following, and specifically in following Kirk.
He had been a good First Officer to Christopher Pike, and he knew this, because in the role of First Officer Spock had found his natural element. But it was as Kirk's First that he had truly come into his own because he and Kirk had discovered in each other an extraordinary natural compatibility that allowed them to fill completely each other's needs and missing spaces. He was not unfamiliar with the view that his own qualities of intellect and physical strength meant that he should have sought promotion rather than serving so long under Kirk – he knew that Kirk himself had been uncertain that this view was incorrect (which, Spock suspected, had probably not been irrelevant to Kirk's attitude to the Seleya posting). But without false modesty or fear of command, he knew that view to be wrong. He knew that being Kirk's First was not only what he wanted but where he functioned best. He even knew, with a confidence which would not have been possible for the lonely young Vulcan officer who had served admirably but not extraordinarily before Kirk took command of the Enterprise, that James T Kirk, the foremost military commander of his generation (possibly in the history of Starfleet) was in part the genius he was because of Spock, just as Spock knew Kirk was responsible for much of what Spock himself had achieved. To follow where Kirk led, to offer alternatives and have them rejected or adopted, to back up without question, to protect, to serve – these had been privileges and honours and miracles as well as the very bedrock of Spock's daily life. And without them, he was lost.
And he still had not heard from Kirk.
Spock did not allow himself to think about the personal elements of his life with Kirk. The fact that it was not allowed did not meant that it did not happen, of course. There were times when he entered his quarters at the end of the day and found himself surprised, all over again, that there was no chess board laid out on the table; times when a report came in on the bridge and he found himself looking to trade glances with hazel eyes and found only dark ones; times when he was working late at night and heard a voice and found, on looking up, that its owner was thousands of light years away. If these times were beyond Spock's ability easily to compute and if they showed no signs of decreasing in frequency or abating in intensity, this was how things were and Spock would manage and adjust. Because there was no choice.
He found that life on a Vulcan ship brought all the challenges he had expected. The first, unexpected change had been losing the role which had been carved out for him as the only Vulcan crew member of the Enterprise, which coloured so many relationships and not only that with Kirk – the ability to infuriate McCoy, to provoke a bridge debate, to mark out his place in a rec room off-duty conversation with "That is not logical" or "Vulcans do not experience..." or even a comment on the Horta appreciation of the shape of the Vulcan ear. Without this, he found himself blindsided – found himself wondering whether, in fact, he had come to define himself as an outsider, whether this was unhealthy, though knowing at the same time that as the only known Vulcan–human hybrid it was a role from which there was no escape. (No escape except in his friendship with Kirk, that very small world within which he had uniquely been neither Vulcan nor human but simply Spock.) Although he would not admit it to himself, he also found himself struggling with T'Mala, his First Officer, a tall, elegant and efficient scientist whom he suspected of looking down at her half-human Captain, although at the same time he knew that this could be his own prejudice. The truth was that he was no longer used to living with Vulcans. The years with Kirk, the time on the Enterprise had changed him more than he had realised, and there were more times than he had expected when he would have welcomed the honesty of an outburst from McCoy. Somewhat to his surprise, he found it easier to work with Saredin himself, the author of the transformation of his life and now Chief Engineer on the Seleya. This was because, for all Saredin's austere adherence to the philosophies of Surak, Saredin's politics separated him from the bland, gave Spock a conversational purchase point, meant Saredin could at least be relied upon to say the unsayable, sometimes, to manifest himself as a distinctive character – so much so that Spock went to the lengths of trying to banish a ghost who insisted on saying, very softly, every time Saredin appeared in front of him "He's an idiot." (This attempt was both unsuccessful and accompanied by an obscure feeling of disloyalty, though Spock was unsure at whom this feeling was directed.) Spock found Saredin something of a relief after the unforgiving responses of T'Mala – T'Mala who occasionally made him remember McCoy with sympathy. Now and again, he found himself hoping for a future in which he could describe the crew of the Seleya to McCoy. It was as much as he could bear. He could not bring himself to envisage doing so with Kirk.
He had thought that Kirk would contact him. Perhaps not the day he left the Enterprise, perhaps that would have been too much to hope for, but perhaps the day after. During the early days, before the Seleya left Vulcan, when he had less to do, he found himself perpetually checking for messages from Kirk and perpetually being disappointed. He spent most of the time interviewing crew members and overseeing the refitting of a vessel purchased through an independent shipping base situated near the Romulan border. Spock suspected the company traded both sides of the border but there was no harm in that; he calculated that the technology would be more likely to be up to date. If the current manning of the Seleya became a permanent arrangement, the VSA might want to revisit some of her design features, but the infrastructure was sufficient for current purposes and, illogically, Spock welcomed the differences which meant there was little on board which reminded him of the Enterprise.
Once they left orbit, he disciplined himself to checking for personal messages once a day, and was still disappointed. He found his mind, in idle moments, going over and over three events in particular in the last weeks on the Enterprise – knowing it to be illogical, obsessive, even unhealthy, but unable to stop himself. He even had names for them.
Incident One was The Decision. By the time he had ended his conversation with Sarek, Spock knew that the pressure to accept the posting was almost impossible to resist. He had held out so far, against the invitation from the VSA and against a number of informal approaches about which he had not informed Kirk, but to refuse his father directly was something he suspected he could not do on his own. What he had hoped, illogically, was that Kirk might do it for him – that a typical reaction from Kirk, all hazel emotionalism, protective explosion, warmth and loyalty, would drown out the voices from home and that, shored up by that stronger claim, Spock would find it in himself to say "No." But this had not happened. Kirk had simply let him go – let him go remarkably easily. And Spock, whilst finding himself, under the circumstances, unable to resent this, also found himself desperate to know why. Had it been because Kirk thought that it was the right thing, even that it was wrong to try to influence Spock? Or had it, simply, mattered less to him?
Incident Two was Ensign Santini. Spock, watching Kirk approach Santini on Alpha Gemma, had found himself turning away, seeking privacy from McCoy's perceptive glance as Kirk asked a question and Santini looked up and started to open up. He knew that people were Kirk's gift, not his, knew that the ability to nurture talent and develop a crew was inherent to who Kirk was. Kirk would rely without question on Spock's computation of time or warp speed to seven decimal places but would choose to make personnel decisions on his own. He also knew that something about Santini – his clumsiness, naivety perhaps - had alienated Kirk. Yet Kirk, at a point when in his heart Spock already thought he had lost him, would be leaving the Enterprise – Kirk, because of advice from Spock (the view of the Vulcan who could not command the confidence of the Galileo crew, who had spent more of his life in a science laboratory than a rec room) – Kirk was making an effort with Santini, and Spock could see the boy light up, begin to turn, to blossom under Kirk's warmth, and so he, Spock had had to turn away.
Incident Three was Kirk's farewell to him. Like Kirk, Spock had approached the final farewell at a total loss as to know what to say. He knew exactly what he wanted to convey but was prepared to vocalise absolutely none of this, and this left him with no words at all and a most un-Vulcan panic at the sudden, imminent loss, like a boat which flows inexorably towards a waterfall and then suddenly lurches, speeds and falls at the last minute. And Kirk himself, he was aware, had also been struggling, though Spock was less clear of the parameters of that struggle. All he knew was that the human had found something he thought appropriate – the ta'al salute (briefly causing Spock the most extraordinary lacerating pain as he grasped the idea that this – this – was how they would say goodbye, with a raised hand, a Vulcan formality and a total absence of human warmth or touch or the things that Spock wanted to say but couldn't). And then Kirk had changed his mind and come back – he had offered the ta'al in case it had been what Spock wanted but had then taken his hand, at the risk of rebuff, in case it was what Spock had needed.
He wished Kirk would write to him, without being remotely aware of how he could initiate such a conversation himself.
He wished Kirk had tried to persuade him to stay, without being remotely sure that he could have complied.
He wished he had managed to tell Kirk, somehow, that he had been perfectly well aware of the amount of credits Kirk had regularly spent on supplies of guava juice for Spock and that Spock's choice to pretend not to be aware that the juice had not appeared by magic had been part of a game and not a sign that he did not place a value on the procurement of the said guava juice entirely disproportionate to the drink itself.
Kirk found it increasingly hard, the first few weeks after Spock's departure, to meet Hikaru Sulu's eyes.
He knew this was entirely irrational, because there was no way that Sulu was aware of the contents of his recent exchanges with Starfleet. But Kirk was himself aware and that awareness intruded increasingly on every conversation with the young helmsman.
Put simply, Startfleet's recommendation was to promote Sulu to First Officer and Kirk had refused. He had not refused because he thought that Sulu was not up to it – far from it. Nor had he refused because he thought that Sulu would be better served on a different ship, having been the helmsman of the Enterprise so long, and with all the attendant changes that would be necessary to relationships with serving members of the crew. Kirk thought that Sulu was more than capable of handling that. And nor had he refused because he could not bear to replace Spock. Spock's absence was a wound which showed not the slightest signs of healing, even after weeks since the start of the Seleya mission, but Kirk was a starship captain and he knew the Enterprise had to have a First Officer.
The reason Kirk had refused was simply that once he promoted Sulu the decision would be irreversible.
The rational in Kirk knew that Spock wasn't coming back. The reasons for this were less relevant than the fact – he might not come back because the Seleya experiment became a permanence, he might not come back because he grew into the command role and would not want to serve under Kirk again, he might not come back because either the VSA or Starfleet forbade it, he might even not come back because of some nightmare world in which a command partnership which was half Vulcan half human was no longer possible. All of that paled into insignificance in Kirk's mind beside the very fact of the absence, the very fact of loss. And this meant that a permanent replacement for Spock was not only logical but necessary.
Nevertheless, the fact was that Kirk's affection, respect and loyalty for Sulu meant that a promotion of the helmsman was the only step he could now take which would, in his own mind, be a permanent block on Spock's return, because it would be beyond both Spock and him to ask Sulu, under those hypothetical circumstances, to step aside. And that was why Kirk had declined Starfleet's recommendation and why, as a consequence, he could not meet Sulu's eyes.
The compromise which he had privately reached (another situation, Sam seemed to point out, in which no one would get what they wanted) was to appoint an external candidate on a fixed twelve month contract. If a miracle happened and Spock returned, Kirk would be able to make the space he needed to put the Vulcan back as his side (where he belonged, in Kirk's private parenthesis). And if, at the end of a year, Kirk was faced with the inevitable, he would replace the external candidate with Sulu and would once again be able to give Sulu an order without looking in the opposite direction.
He was rescued by Mike Harding, an old friend from Academy days, who wrote to Kirk inviting him to his wedding on Earth in twelve months time. "You'll remember from meeting Lisa last year", he wrote "that I won't be allowed on a starship again once we've tied the knot! So I'm looking for a role planetside. In an ideal world, I'd have one last fling in the stars till then, but it's hard to get a short term posting at command level." Kirk had spoken to Harding and offered him the posting within hours of reading this message. He liked and trusted Mike – it would not be like working with Spock, but then nothing would, and the crew would be happy.
It was a good choice – Harding was a cheerful, uncomplicated man who found instant acceptance with a crew disposed to find fault with any First Officer whose skin tone was not olive green and who did not routinely give the time of day to three decimal points. Mike was not stupid, he knew the nature of the being he was replacing and went out of his way to ensure that no one thought he was trying to be Spock. Kirk had known him long enough to feel no disloyalty to Spock in the provision of instant companionship which did very little to alleviate Kirk's coruscating loneliness. And Harding made an instant ally of McCoy who, whilst missing Spock more than he was prepared to admit to anyone, let alone himself, found an easy congeniality in Harding's company.
Kirk hoped this might stop McCoy asking him how Spock was. The questions had started off hourly and were still at least daily, and Kirk had yet to find the courage to tell the doctor that he had not actually contacted Spock. It was not that he did not want to – on the contrary, the silence, the lack of contact with the Vulcan was the most unnatural experience which felt, most of the time, like a physical pain. But he had not the slightest idea of how to turn his relationship with Spock into a correspondence.
The truth was that there was no one in Kirk's life to whom he wrote regularly, preferring to speak even to his mother rather than write, however infrequently possible (a preference not shared by his surviving parent). He had neither the time nor inclination to do otherwise. And although there had been plenty of instances of crew members transferring off ships where he had served and where those crew members had become friends, it had never occurred to him to write, trusting instead to the inevitability of Starfleet life which meant you washed up against them, one day or one year, in some Starbase, in some distant planet. And he had never known Spock other than on the Enterprise – their entire relationship had been based on the closest of proximity.
How to turn Spock into someone to whom he wrote "Dear Spock...?"
How to ask him how he was, send him regards from McCoy?
How to know – how to be absolutely sure – the Vulcan would even want it?
Kirk had, in fact, written a number of messages to Spock. It was just that he hadn't sent them. And nor had he sent the other message, the one he hadn't written.
Those Kirk had actually written and then deleted in disgust, ran as follows:
"Dear Spock, how is the mission going?"
"Dear Spock, McCoy wants to know how you are coping with all those Vulcans."
"Dear Spock, is there anyone on the Seleya who can play chess?"
The message he had not actually written went as follows:
"Dear Spock. I have not written to you but then you have not written to me and perhaps neither of us quite knows why not. I know that, in great part, there is a huge reluctance in me to write the words "Dear Spock", because they turn us into something we have never been and suggest that, appallingly, it might actually be true that you are no longer my constant comrade, my balance but someone on other ship, in another life. Dear Spock – I didn't try to make you stay, but you didn't try to stay, either. Should I have? I think if I absolutely knew that you were unhappy with your choice, instead of it being a nagging worry lurking at the back of my mind (like that feeling in a mission when you know that it's not quite all it seems but you can't put your finger on why) – if I absolutely knew, I would make a nuisance of myself and probably a fool of both of us and find someone both at Starfleet and at the VSA to punch. But instead I am sitting at this computer console not even absolutely sure that you want me to write to you. Dear Spock, I wonder if you also work out chess moves in a game we'll never play. Dear Spock, what on earth am I supposed to do with all this guava juice?"
But in the end, he found the words. It was two months after Spock had left and, after receiving an update from Scotty on the Engineering Department one uneventful morning on bridge duty, he found himself sitting at the computer over lunch at the end of the shift.
"I thought you would like to know that the officer complement of the Engineering Department has increased by the addition of one Lieutenant Santini. Warp engines still intact – so far. Let me know how you are, Spock - J. "
And found his answer the following morning, checking for messages as he got dressed in his quarters.
"Captain, I trust that you have found a suitable accounting head of expenditure under which to allocate Commander Scott's increase in salary. And I hope you are well. Best wishes, Spock, Seleya."
Like the farewell handclasp, it was not much, but it was just about enough.