AN: Many references to many different episodes here, so let me know if there are any you want further depth into!

Chapter 3: Numb

Uhura isn't the only one shocked when Commander Spock accedes to Dr McCoy's suggestion that he rest in his quarters. The crew on the Bridge who didn't witness Parmen's cruelty firsthand, Sulu and Chekov, eye her questioningly behind his departing back. She shakes her head - later.

Captain Kirk suggests she takes time to recover from the events of the planet. She leaves for her quarters, but once back in uniform, goes to Nurse Chapel's room. Christine has not yet drawn together the mental wherewithal to change and sits in the lavender gown the Platonians had forced her into.

"I'm sorry I- I shouldn't be like this." Her face is scrunched in a desperate attempt to keep herself from crumbling into pieces. "They didn't even really do anything that bad. It's just- it's just Mr Spock-!"

Later, when Christine has calmed down, Uhura goes back to the Bridge. She stops outside Spock's quarters. What Spock suffered on Platonius was one of the worst tortures that could be inflicted on a Vulcan and she cannot shake the dread that crawls up her spine.

She rings the door chime. No response.

She lived on Vulcan once, just for a few months, staying with a girl she met at the Academy. Her name was T'Prei and, despite the veneer of Vulcan coldness, she was always very kind about Uhura's "authentic" accent.

She rings again. Still nothing. She presses the comm on the wall, patches herself through to Sickbay and rolls her shoulders in a vain attempt to cast off that creeping dread.

"McCoy here." He sounds exhausted, but Uhura has little time to care.

"Commander Spock isn't answering his door."

McCoy yawns from the other end. "Probably in one of those healing trance thingies. Just let him get to it."

Uhura hesitates. "I really think you should override the door code. I'm- I'm worried about him."

A sigh. "Fine." She can nearly hear the roll of his eyes over the comm unit and she does hear him grumble under his breath, "Darn Vulcan, got everyone on this ship in the palm of his hand..."

"Is a healing trance the only way in which Vulcans utilise the discipline they have over their bodies?"

"It is... not the only way. Some Vulcans have been known to use it to the reverse effect."

Uhura's eyebrow flickered. She had been living with T'Prei for a month now, long enough to have picked up some Vulcan habits. "What do you mean?"

"A clan member of my mother's, for example." T'Prei's voice dropped a decibel. "There is a certain time in the lives of Vulcan males at which their mental controls may slip. Do not ask me when," she added sharply, "But it is something understood among Vulcans. In the case of this male, his mental ability returned, but he was changed by the experience. He felt ashamed. So rather than using the discipline of his body to heal, he forced his heart to slow and passed away."

"You're saying he tried to kill himself?" McCoy can barely stop himself from snapping his Data Padd in two when Uhura tells him her concerns. "Because of some- some Vulcan sensibilities?"

"I don't know anything for sure," is Uhura's careful answer. "But you said yourself - it's like a healing trance, but with the opposite effect. What the Platonians did to us was terrifying, humiliating... Can you imagine how much worse it was on a Vulcan?"

McCoy pinches the bridge of his nose, looks to where Spock is hooked up to all manner of medical machines that have kept his vital signs stable for the past few hours. "If it's a trance it'll be easy enough to wake him up. But I just- I can't believe he'd do that to us. To Jim. Maybe you're right about the mental controls, but couldn't it just be some- some side-effect from the Kironide or something?"

"Well, you're the Doctor," Uhura concedes, but it couldn't be more obvious what she really thinks.

McCoy never voices Uhura's concerns and, when he wakes, Spock agrees easily enough with the half-assembled reasoning that an overexposure to Kironide led to his collapse. Kirk questions nothing, happy to see his First Officer out of danger.

"You know he'd be lost without you," McCoy says lightly after a visit from Kirk. "So would the ship, practically. Imagine the effect your death would have."

Spock senses an undercurrent of meaning to this seeming compliment and does not reply with his own thoughts on the matter. His shields are as weak as they had been before the suicide attempt, but the mixture of anger, confusion and hurt he gets from McCoy does little at all to affect him.

It does affect him when McCoy takes his place at the hands of the Vians. He is furious and, he acknowledges with only a little surprise, jealous. The feeling fades once it is clear McCoy will make a full recovery.

"It's stuck! Push the button!"

Later, Spock's calm faith in their Chief Engineer will earn him yet another commendation. "Please continue, Mister Scott."

"Don't be a fool! Push the button! It's your last chance! Don't get sentimental, push it. I'm going to die anyway."

But if Spock pushes the button, then only Scott will die. Spock isn't a fool. His priorities have simply changed; Jim Kirk, safe enough on the planet below, has risen in ranking far above the Enterprise. When, Spock wonders, did that happen?

Insomnia becomes an issue. Spock lies awake and thinks of death; his, Jim's, McCoy's; thoughts of the mission drawing to an end; thoughts of what he has achieved, what he has not, what he may... As it becomes harder to fall asleep it becomes harder to wake, too. He is glad the humans he serves with would never notice the seconds of lateness that creep into his daily routine.

"You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him because you'll never know the things that love can drive a man to. The ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories. All of these things you'll never know simply because the word love isn't written into your book. Goodnight, Spock."

Spock ponders on McCoy's words. An idea forms. "Goodnight, Doctor."

"I do wish he could forget her."

Is it love that drives him to the meld? Is it duty? He only knows that doing such a thing before, without consent, would have been unthinkable - but now his highest priority is the Captain. His own life is at the bottom and, surely, his principles lie there too?

"Forget."

Sevrin climbs the tree and Spock wonders absent-mindedly if he should join him.

"Come back here, you fool!"

"Sevrin, don't! You'll kill yourself!"

"Don't bite into that!"

"Stop!"

But Sevrin does not stop and all Spock can think is, we reach.

He tells Irina later not to give up the search for Eden, that she may build it herself. Personally he lacks the energy to try.

Looking back, Spock acknowledges that he has not been more content than here, on the Enterprise. That will all end soon. Already the scientific endeavours for which he enrolled in Starfleet Academy have lost their more appealing qualities and so too have the social aspects of being aboard a starship. He increases the length of his meditations, spends hours locked in his quarters, and refuses Kirk's offers of chess.

After a month, he comes to the same conclusion Sevrin had in his last, desperate moments; if Eden exists anywhere, it is not to be found in this universe. He considers sharing his insight with the Captain, or Chief Medical Officer but, as he says when the imitation of Surak is begging for help from afar, 'A Vulcan would not cry out so.'

Lust pounds through him for Zarabeth, fury at McCoy, and it is strangely refreshing. It brings into a sharp focus how little he felt in his own time frame.

"Do you know what it is like to be alone?" Zarabeth questions. "Really alone?"

"Yes." Spock did not know any different until the Enterprise and, whether they make it back to their own timeframe or not, the Enterprise is soon to be lost to him. "I know what it is like."

"As you can see, I've returned to the present in every sense."

When did repressing emotion change to a lack of them altogether? Perhaps, Spock thinks, his mental shields did not heal after the events of Platonius. Perhaps he merely had no use of them anymore. It is the acceptance of what he iterates to the Doctor - "she is dead now. Dead and buried. Long ago." All things come to an end. It is the ultimate embodiment of kaiidth to accept the universal unimportance of not only himself, but everyone he has or will ever encounter.

On an earlier mission Spock had taken Scalosian water in order to save the Captain from being trapped in a sped-up state of being. If the antidote to the water had not worked on Spock, if he had stayed permanently in that state, would it have made any true difference? Would anything?

Emotions, attachments, friends. There is no meaning to any of them.

And thus he realises, with the same apathetic numbness that pervades every aspect of his current existence, that he has finally proved a true Vulcan. Fascinating, how easy it comes.

He places a subspace call to his parents and announces his decision to leave Starfleet at the end of this mission so he may return to his home planet.

"That's wonderful news, Spock!" His mother beams at him from many light years away and he feels nothing. "Do you know what it is you wish to do here yet? Lecture, perhaps? I'm sure the VSA-"

"I wish to achieve Kolinahr."

His mother's face turns white. "What?"

Sarek, as ever, is practical. "It is a long and difficult undertaking. I imagine even more so after living among humans."

"Maintaining Vulcan control in the midst of such a situation has served only to strengthen my mental shielding," Spock lies. He has surpassed the need for such shielding. "I would be grateful if you could make the necessary arrangements as I complete the final weeks of the mission. There is no point in delay."

"As you wish," Sarek answers and does not push the matter. Kolinahr is a respectable enough pursuit. "I will have it arranged."

Amanda reaches a hand out, presses it against the viewscreen in a vain attempt to reach her son. "Spock, are you-"

The viewscreen cuts out and she feels she has lost something irretrievable.

Jim isn't surprised that Spock doesn't wish him farewell. He has noticed a change in his First Officer during the last months of the mission, and that it was a change he'd noticed in himself made it all the easier to ignore. Both of them had become more introspective, self focussed. For Kirk it was the question of 'What next?' that drew him into melancholia. Would he really be happy serving in Starfleet without a ship of his own? For Spock- well. Kirk has no idea why the change happened, only that it did.

McCoy rants for days after Spock's departure, says he has thrown their friendship well and truly out the window. Kirk nods along, smiles at appropriate moments, and hopes the guilty feeling in his chest will ease. It's easier being dragged into McCoy's anger than considering there might be something they have overlooked in all of this.