Disclaimer: Characters contained within do not belong to me, but to Gene Roddenberry, Paramount Pictures, etc.
Author's Notes: Thank you so much everyone for all the amazing reviews on the last chapter. I know it was a tough one to read, so I really appreciate it. Hopefully you'll enjoy this chapter, too:) Thank you, as always, to Lisa for being awesome.
If Tomorrow Never Comes
by Kristen Elizabeth
Spock had never given death much thought until he entered Starfleet. As a Vulcan, his life expectancy was so much greater than his Human roommates and colleagues, yet the very nature of the organization to which he'd dedicated himself forced him to ponder the idea of his own mortality with surprising regularity.
People died in service to Starfleet every day in one sector or another. Thousands of lives had been lost within minutes to a mad man during what should have been an evacuation and rescue mission. He'd known almost every one of those fallen cadets and officers; some of them had been assigned to the various ships by his own designation.
And while it was illogical to take the next step and say that he was responsible for their deaths, he had attended the mass memorial that had been given for them and listened carefully to each name, trying to picture the bright and eager face that had gone with it.
Perhaps it was the fact that Nyota had come so frighteningly close to being one of those names carved into the newly erected monument at the Academy that had made Spock truly stop and consider the risks inherent in choosing a Starfleet career. On the night of the memorial service, he'd walked the campus for hours in the dark, trying to imagine what he would have been feeling right then if he hadn't changed Nyota's assignment to the Enterprise at the last minute.
Finally, the idea of it had become too much for him to bear and he'd found himself standing in front of her dorm, punching in the access code.
She'd been crying. Her eyes were red and her lashes were wet with tears, but she managed to smile when she saw him at her door.
"I was hoping you'd come by," she'd whispered. "Gaila's parents were just here for the last of her stuff, and I..." She'd bitten her lip for a long moment. "I really don't want to be alone tonight."
They'd undressed in the dark, revealing their bodies to each other for the first time. When they came together, it was unlike anything Spock had ever experienced. They moved as one by the light of the moon, meeting over and over again, faster and harder, until the world exploded into ecstasy. He'd wanted to be inside her mind, like he was inside her body, but he hadn't known if she was ready for that. Vulcans mated for life; Humans were far more flexible.
He'd told himself that it was enough that she was alive, that they'd both survived. He could be patient. He'd wait until the right time.
He'd allowed himself to forget everything he should have learned from the loss of so many cadets, not to mention billions of his own people.
Life could be long, but it was never guaranteed.
The first thing Kirk could think to do was to send for another Away Team. Sulu, Scotty and McCoy arrived thirty minutes later, unaware of the nightmare into which they were landing.
Truthfully, Kirk hadn't completely processed it himself. It had all happened so fast; in what had seemed like the blink of an eye, he'd lost two of his best officers, one of whom had been painfully young, and the other who he'd considered a good friend. Certainly she'd been one of the few people in his life who'd ever put him in his place. It was a trait he had admired and valued.
It should have been him, a voice in the back of his mind screamed as he explained the situation to the second landing party. A captain was supposed to protect his crew and yet when Chekov and Uhura had needed him, he'd been utterly useless.
As trained officers, the men accepted the news with as much forced composure as possible, although Scotty did lower his head in what seemed to be a silent moment of prayer, Sulu kept swallowing, his Adam's apple bobbing and McCoy had his fist so tightly balled around the handle of his medical kit that his knuckles looked ready to split open.
"What do you need us to do?" Sulu asked Kirk.
"Chekov...he found something in the Grissom shuttle's computer, but he never got a chance to..." Kirk had to stop for a second. There were so many things that Chekov had never gotten to do. He might have already graduated from the Academy and secured a position on the fleet's flagship, but had he ever gotten hopelessly drunk or thoroughly laid?
"Figure out what he found, Sulu," he continued. "Scotty, I need your help with him." He pointed to the dead Klingon. "His weapon...I've never seen anything like it." Kirk's jaw was tight with sudden anger. "I want to know what it did to them."
Scotty nodded, but his attention was focused a few yards away where Spock stood, staring down at the ground. "What do you suppose is goin' through his mind right now?" he wondered out loud.
"Mr. Scott?" When his chief engineer looked back at him, Kirk jerked his head towards the Klingon. "Let's get to work."
When the other two men headed off on their assignments, McCoy looked his old friend up and down with a doctor's eye. "You're blaming yourself, aren't you?"
"I know I didn't kill them, Bones. But it sure as hell feels like I could have stopped it." Before McCoy could reply, Kirk went on. "You're going to have to make it official." He paused. "There's no bodies, but..."
McCoy held up his hand to stop him. "I'll take care of it, Jim." He looked at Spock. "You and I both know that he probably wants to be alone right now, but if you want my medical opinion...he really shouldn't be."
"I don't know what to say to him," Kirk admitted.
"You'll figure it out. You always do." With that, McCoy headed back to the shuttle to begin composing the death certificates.
Kirk took his time approaching Spock, giving him plenty of warning as to his presence. And although Spock didn't acknowledge him, Kirk came to a stop by his side and looked down at the spot where Uhura had been savagely and suddenly ripped from their lives.
It took a minute for Kirk to notice a twisted circle of metal that Spock held in his hand. It looked vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until Spock began speaking that he recognized what it was.
"This must have come off when she was struck by the Klingon." His words came out dry and lifeless as he held up one of Uhura's earrings. "It is all I have found of her."
"You shouldn't be here, Spock," Kirk said after a moment of reverent silence. "You should take the other shuttlecraft back to the..."
"No." Spock closed his hand around the earring. "There is too much work to be done."
"Spock..." He tried again. "No one would blame you for taking some time off to..." Kirk hesitated. "I mean, we all cared about her, but you and she were..."
Once again, Spock cut him off. "It is precisely because of my relationship with Nyota that I will not rest until we understand what happened to her, as well as to Lieutenant Chekov and the crew of the Grissom." He brought the fist he'd made around Uhura's earring up to his mouth for a moment. "At the very least, I owe her that, Jim."
Kirk nodded slowly. "Okay." Putting a hand on Spock's shoulder, he asked, "Is there anything you need?"
What do you need? Her eyes had pleaded with him in the turbolift after his entire world had fallen apart. Tell me...
Spock shrugged off the captain's hand. "I do not need anything except your assurance that no orders from Starfleet will supersede this investigation."
"I swear," Kirk said. "We stay here until we have all the answers."
He'd just started to walk away when Spock spoke again. "She wore these earrings on the first night we shared a meal together at the Academy." He opened up his fingers and looked down at the metal hoop. "I did not notice she put them on today."
There was a hard lump in Kirk's throat that he couldn't swallow no matter how hard he tried. "Sulu's in the other shuttlecraft, trying to sort out their computer. I bet he could use some help."
Spock inclined his chin. "That will be fine." With that, he slipped the earring into the pocket of his uniform pants and began making his way to the Grissom's shuttlecraft. Kirk watched him for a second before starting off again, towards Scotty and the dead Klingon whose weapon he was examining.
Neither man was aware of Chekov standing next to them, screaming at the top of his lungs and waving his arms wildly in a futile effort to be seen or heard.
Her whole body hurt. Drifting back from the darkness, Uhura was aware of only this fact. Pain. Everywhere. From her throbbing lip to her aching stomach to her stinging knees. She didn't want to wake up. She wanted to stay in the dark, where there was peace.
"Lieutenant!"
Through her lashes, she could barely make out a face hanging over her. He was frowning and a second later she felt his hands on her shoulders. "Lieutenant Uhura! Please wake up!"
Uhura knew that accent. "Chekov?" There would be no escape back into the darkness. She would just have to endure the pain. When he tried to shake her again, she fended him off with weak arms. "Stop...I'm awake."
He sat back on his heels and ran the bloody sleeve of his uniform across his eyes. Uhura tried to sit up, but the agonizing soreness in her stomach brought tears to the corners of her eyes. She put a hand to her ribs. "What the hell happened?"
It was only when Chekov sniffed that she realized he was valiantly trying to hold back tears of his own. "I believe...we have died."
Uhura stared at him. "Why would you even say that?"
"Because..." Chekov stopped short, shaking his head. "No. I must be showing you." Rising, he reached for her hands. "Can you stand?"
She could, but not without a little help and a lot of sweat-inducing effort. Even when she was finally on her feet, she felt dizzy and might have wound up back on the ground if Chekov hadn't grabbed her arm to steady her.
"It was like that for me, too," he told her. "The disorientation...it will pass."
Uhura ran her tongue over her lower lip, only to find it cracked and bloody. She touched her swollen mouth. "I don't understand."
Chekov nodded. "Let me show you."
Looking around, Uhura frowned. "Where are we? Where's the shuttle? Where's Jim?" She hesitated. "And Spock?" Her memory began to fall into place. "The Klingon! Where is he?" When she spun her head around, searching for that ugly alien face, the dizziness returned and she had to grasp Chekov's shoulder. "The Klingon...he...he killed you."
The young man nodded again, slowly this time. Sadly. "I am not the only one he killed."
Uhura could taste blood in her mouth. She touched her sore stomach...and had a brief flash of memory...a burning blast to the gut, the shock of impact, the slow drain into the darkness.
"Spock." Ignoring her disorientation, Uhura began walking. She had no idea where she was or what direction she needed to go, but she had to move, had to find him. "Spock!"
Chekov grasped her hand and held on even when she tried to wrestle free. "It will not be easy, but you must see for yourself."
Like a child, she let him lead her step by step, over the rocky terrain, until the outline of two shuttlecrafts lay in the distance.
"How did I get so far away?"
"I do not know. You were taken much farther than me," Chekov said. "I woke just over there." He pointed to a place just beyond the shuttle. "I did not realize what had happened until..."
Uhura was afraid to ask, but forced herself. "Until what?"
"They could not hear me." His achingly-young face was so troubled. Confused and wounded, a little boy lost. "They could not see me. I was trying everything to make them." He shook his head. "Nothing. It was as if I was not there." He paused before saying a single word in Russian.
A word that sent a chill down her spine.
Uhura's throat stuck as she tried to swallow. Without caring about her aches and pains and dizziness, she began running towards the shuttle.
She spotted Kirk and Scotty first. They were standing over the corpse of the Klingon warrior; the captain was holding the alien's weapon while Scotty ran a tricorder around it, taking readings.
"Captain!" Uhura yelled. He said something to Scotty that she couldn't hear, but never looked up. She tried again. "Jim!"
Nothing.
Chekov came up behind her. "He cannot hear or see you, Lieutenant."
Ignoring him, Uhura covered the remaining distance between them. Getting right up alongside the captain, she swore in his ear, "Jim Kirk, if you don't talk to me, I will kick you where you'll feel it the most!"
The captain looked down at the gun in his hands. "It looks like pictures I've seen of Klingon disruptors, but it's way more sophisticated."
Scotty nodded. "Aye. It's actually a lot more like a ruddy piece of science equipment than it is a weapon, you know?" He smoothed a hand over his round head, lost in thought for a moment. "Correct me if I'm wrong, Captain, but the Klingons aren't exactly known for their scientific exploits, are they?"
"No." Kirk frowned. "They're not. And I really don't like the idea of them playing around with science and weapons at the same time." He turned the gun over in his hands. "Not if this is the end result."
Uhura backed away from the men. "I don't..." She shook her head. "Why are they ignoring me?"
Before Chekov could answer, there was movement near one of the two shuttlecrafts, the one bearing the name USS Grissom. She saw the familiar blue of his uniform shirt a split second before he emerged from the shuttle.
"Spock!" She started running for him.
"Lieutenant, don't!" Chekov shouted.
But it was too late. She'd already reached Spock and thrown her arms around him...only to have them pass straight through his torso. Unaware, he kept walking, heading for Kirk and Scotty.
Uhura couldn't move. After a long time, her arms fell to her sides and her whole body began to tremble.
Chekov came up behind her and reached for her hand. His warm fingers felt like hot coals against her cold, clammy palm.
"Ghosts," he said, this time in English rather than Russian. "We are no longer alive."
"That's not entirely true."
The voice came from behind them. When they whipped around to locate the source, they saw a woman standing behind them, wearing a ripped and stained blue Starfleet uniform dress. Her blonde hair was tangled mess, caked with dirt and blood. Her right cheek was swollen and purple around a deep cut.
"We're not dead," the woman continued. "But really...we might as well be."
To Be Continued
