Credit for the passage 'Spock, there are humans that evolve and humans that seem not to ... is one of those humans.' goes to pandora-skye on deviantart

[A.N. I am getting very annoyed at this website deleting the pagebreaks I put in. I use asterisks – it deletes them. I've tried dashes, I've tried arrows, it deletes them. I *do* have pagebreaks in my story to separate scenes, honestly!]

7.

Spock remembered running like a hunted animal through a field of wheat, cold rain peppering his skin. But the plants that surrounded him now were almost chest high, of a red-purple hue. Their stalks and leaves had the smooth, reflective surfaces of a plant accustomed to holding on to whatever water it could until the next rains came. The sun that beat down on his skin was the welcome blaze of 40 Eridani, and the sandy soil beneath his feet was the soil of home.

He had walked into the field deliberately, but he was not certain why. Perhaps he was trying to recapture something of those last moments before his life had changed, trying to remind himself that there had been a *before* as well as an *after*. Perhaps he was poking a blunt stick into a wound, trying to find out exactly how much it hurt. Whatever the reason, he was here, surrounded by swaying leaves, with the differences and similarities to that other situation washing about him like currents in water.

*Idic,* he thought to himself. There were infinite fields of crops on infinite planets, and infinite bipedal creatures striding into them right at this moment for infinite different reasons. It did not have to end how it had ended for him.

He pushed his way onward until he came to a place where the bedrock pushed through the thin soil in a soft, sand-scoured swell like a whale breaking the surface of the sea.

He had ducked into this field numerous times when he was a child. He had become invisible, when he was small and the crops were higher than his head, and he had been able to pick his way without disturbing the leaves to that place in the field where this rock lay. He sat there now, eyes closed, remembering the taunting calls of his classmates on the road nearby and how he had tried to close his mind down to the wincingly cruel things they had said about him and his family. And then his mind moved until he was kneeling in that other field, rain spattering onto his back, and the shouts were of adult men hunting him down.

He closed his eyes more tightly, rationalising the memory, telling himself that those men had no more power to harm him now than did the children of his youth. Memories were memories, nothing more. Ghosts of the past. Distorted fragments of what had happened and was no longer happening. He allowed himself to feel his body, remembering the ghosts of pain and invasion, and then feeling with more force the absence of pain in a body that had now been healed.

He took in a deep breath, feeling it fill his lungs. He was whole, complete in himself, self-contained. His mind was under his own control.

He exhaled, feeling a degree of the anxiety and pain leave his body with the breath, feeling the rigidity and security of mental control soothing his mind. He had only spent fifteen hours so far in close consultation with his assigned Healer, but he could already feel the benefits. His memories were still as vivid, but his ability to process them without emotion was slowly increasing.

'Spock.'

He concealed a start before it reached his muscles, and opened his eyes. Sarek was standing in front of him. He looked up, letting his eyes travel over the dark solidity of his father's clothing before allowing his own gaze to meet Sarek's. His father had always had the most penetrating of gazes. Spock knew that Sarek could not – or at least *would not* - read what was passing through his mind – but that knowledge did little to ease his instinctive feeling that Sarek was aware of every layer of thought that clustered in his mind.

Neither his father nor his mother knew precisely why he was here. They knew he was troubled – that much was obvious. But only the Healer that Spock saw daily knew the precise reasons for this sudden period of leave on Vulcan. His parents were curious, but so far they had respected Spock's request for privacy, and had asked him nothing.

'Your mother was concerned,' Sarek said smoothly, his eyes unwavering on Spock's own.

Spock tilted an eyebrow in question, and was rewarded by the smallest sign of discomfort in his father as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

'She observed your entry to this field,' Sarek continued in explanation. 'Your mother believes – taking into account past observations – that this means you are distressed.'

Spock inclined his head briefly, then stood up, carefully brushing dust from his clothing. Sarek was obviously made uncomfortable by the suggestion of distress – but it was just as obvious that he knew his wife might be correct.

Spock opened his mouth minutely, about to respond – but then he pressed his lips together again, and said after a moment, 'I was about to return home. I will let mother know there is no need for concern.'

Sarek nodded, and stepped aside, allowing Spock to pass him to push into the mass of leaves and stalks. Spock's discomfort at having the presence of another so close behind him was momentarily and quickly rationalised and suppressed, a mere flicker in his mind.

They walked in silence, their pace necessarily slowed by the rough ground and the tangled crops. But finally Sarek said, 'Is it your intention to explain your presence here, Spock?'

Spock turned his head slightly, not quite looking round, and then continued onward through the field.

'My presence on Soltek's land?' he asked innocently. 'I was assured by him thirty years ago that it would not be taken as trespass. He has never rescinded that permission.'

'You are very well aware that is not what I mean,' Sarek said with a slight edge to his voice. 'You have come to our house, and we welcomed you without question.'

'This is not *without question,*' Spock pointed out.

His father exhaled, a noise that would have been attributed to annoyance in a human.

'You are visiting a Healer who specialises in the treatment of mental trauma,' Sarek continued solidly.

'That is true,' Spock said, his voice devoid of inflection.

'Do you intend to honour your parents with any information as to what has happened to their son?' Sarek asked, the edge in his voice becoming a little sharper.

Spock closed his eyes for the briefest of moments before pushing on through the crops. They were nearly at the edge of the field now, where the light winds caused sand to scud across the road and the heat of the sun reflected back off the ground as if it was striking a mirror. He inhaled the hot, dusty air as he stepped out onto the hard road surface, letting the warmth of it spread through his lungs.

'I was held hostage for a month by human terrorists,' he said finally, still not looking round.

'And you were – tortured?' Sarek hazarded, his voice very controlled.

Spock's shoulderblades tightened.

'I do not wish to speak further on the matter,' he said flatly.

'I see,' Sarek said after a long pause.

Spock could feel that his father's tension had eased, just a little.

'It – is enough to know that your troubles occurred in the line of duty,' Sarek continued. 'Your mother had been concerned – ' Uncharacteristically, he trailed off.

Spock turned, surprised. 'Mother had been concerned - ?' he prompted. It was unusual for Sarek to leave a sentence uncompleted.

'No matter,' Sarek said, his eyes veiled. 'It is not of consequence.'

Spock regarded him steadily for a moment, wondering what it was that Sarek had left unspoken.

'Are you certain of that, Sarek?' he asked. 'Your tone would suggest otherwise.'

That statement, Spock knew, came very close to an insult to a Vulcan practised in emotional control. He also knew that the best way to elicit information from his father was to irritate it out of him.

'You keep your private life – extremely private – even from your parents,' Sarek said tangentially.

Spock's eyebrow spasmed briefly upwards, suddenly aware of the reason behind his father's extreme awkwardness. Spock's private life, outside of his own thoughts and feelings, contained very little – except for Jim… Sarek would never expect him to discourse at length about the internal musings of his mind. He would, however, expect his son to discuss family business, within the family – and his relationship with Jim constituted family business.

He pursed his lips, his eyes on the road ahead rather than on his father. In the distance the dust whipped up by the wind had the effect of blurring the reddish ground into the reddish sky, and the view had the appearance of being endless.

He had known that this moment would come eventually – but he had no desire for it to come now. Same-sex relationships were not unknown on Vulcan. Vulcans did not have terms for different sexual preferences, since a relationship carried out within the bounds of logic was simply a relationship, no matter what the gender of the participants. There was considerable logic in same-sex partnerships – especially to a race with a biological imperative to bond and mate despite many varied reasons for wishing to avoid the procreation of children. Vulcan was a harsh planet to survive upon, and before its people had clambered out of a life of subsistence farming overpopulation was a very real risk to societies struggling against drought and famine, whereas secure, childless couples were a boon to the community.

Those facts not withstanding, Spock had never found an opportune moment to tell his father that he was engaged in a fully bonded relationship with the human captain of his ship. No matter how accepting Vulcan as a whole was of same-sex relationships, he had no illusion that Sarek, ever critical of unconventionality, would accept the news with equanimity.

'There is very little in my private life that would be of relevance to you,' he said finally.

'Of course,' Sarek said.

His gaze, as ever, was penetrating, but Spock ignored its scrutiny and walked on towards the house. He was aware that this was a discussion that would have to take place, eventually – but he had no intention of sharing it with his father before telling his mother.

*Pagebreak*

The images flickered on the screen far faster than it would be possible for a human to read, but Spock's eyes took them in with ease, his brain processing multiple streams simultaneously. It was not possible to perform a detailed analysis of the various news-streams that were playing before him, but Samek, his Healer, had not set the exercise for that purpose. Spock's only concern was to register the gist of each story and process his emotional reaction to it rather than to garner a detailed understanding of every individual case.

An archive image of Tarsus 4 flickered before his eyes, and he closed them, momentarily shaken by the personal impact of that scene.

'Computer, halt,' he said, and the images froze, blurred halfway through a fade from one to the next. 'Rewind through fourteen images,' he said, and the computer silently and obediently took him back to the story of Tarsus.

He leaned forward, taking in the image and the attendant close-packed paragraphs of print – the fashions of over twenty years ago, the bewildered, emaciated population, the descriptions of sufferings visited upon humans by humans. It was all familiar to him, through the veil of Jim's mind. He had not been on Tarsus at that time, but he had shared a little of Jim's reaction to his own suffering.

'Humans…' he murmured.

This, presumably, was why Samek had told him to only consider each image briefly. The aim was to reconcile him to humans through their full spread of goods and evils, to remind him that what had happened to him was neither unique nor common, but simply something that happened. There were at least as many positive stories as negative in the images he had been studying – precisely sixty-four percent positive, the analytical part of his brain corrected him.

'Your mother is a human,' said a soft voice from behind him. 'And you are half human.'

It was all Spock could do not to jump. He briefly wondered why he had not shut the door to his room – a shut door was as good as a lock on Vulcan. But no matter. He had not shut it, and his mother had come into his room without him realising, and had heard that one sighed word.

He turned the screen off, then looked round, and nodded.

'Those closest to us are often exempt from classification in our minds,' he said as his mother sat on the edge of his bed.

'Oh, you do classify me, Spock,' she said with a smile. 'But you classify me as 'mother' – and that excuses me from many evils.'

'I am not certain you have ever committed an evil,' Spock said honestly.

'Well, misdeeds, then,' she conceded. 'Like coming into my son's room without knocking. Like being concerned no matter how much you tell me not to be. Like – asking you now what it is that makes you say *humans* in that way, as if that entire race of beings has let you down.'

'I thought I had explained to you – ' Spock began, with a sense of impatience creeping over him. Every fresh mentioned of what had happened made him feel naked and exposed.

'You explained that a small number of human men did some – terrible things to you,' she said, with obvious difficulty at having to consider any such harm happening to her son. 'And I understand that you don't want to tell me exactly what they did. I'm not asking you to tell me exactly what they did. But – there's something more, Spock. You're looking at all humans and seeing what those few men did, aren't you? That's not like you. It's not like you to not be able to separate the one from the many.'

Spock closed his eyes, shaking his head.

'I – don't know, mother,' he admitted tiredly. 'I don't know why I have such trouble separating the one from the other…'

'You had to leave your ship because of it,' Amanda reminded him.

'Yes,' Spock nodded, his tone a little more terse.

'Spock – ' She opened her mouth, then shut it again, as if reconsidering her wording. Then she began again. 'Spock, you are my son. I can't say I understand you completely. Some people think that mothers have a magic key into their sons' minds, and I don't believe that's true. But – would you permit me to – hazard a guess?'

Spock looked up at his mother, at the concern in her eyes and the hesitancy in her face. He clasped his hands together, summoning a barrier of protection in his mind against whatever difficult subject his mother was about to broach, and nodded slowly.

'Your guesses are often sound,' he said.

'Spock, you are very close to your captain, aren't you?' she asked.

Involuntarily Spock's gaze fell, and he felt a heat coming into his cheeks.

'I – believe – you have surmised I am more than that,' he said, his voice little more than a murmur.

'Spock…'

In the periphery of his vision Spock saw her hand move towards him, and she wrapped her fingers around his, stroking the backs of his fingers with hers. For a brief moment he was transported back to multiple moments of his childhood – waiting to enter the building on his first day at school, and numerous other small, nervous moments – and the feeling of his mother's fingers discreetly stroking his, imparting a reassurance that other Vulcan children did not seem to need.

He looked up, and saw that his mother was smiling. There was no disappointment or dismay in her face. A relief that he had not realised he was waiting for washed through his body at the look on her face.

'Why didn't you tell us, Spock?' she asked him. 'Did you expect us to be anything other than happy for you?'

'I – am uncertain of what I expected,' Spock admitted. 'I am still uncertain of what I expect from Sarek.'

There was a moment's hesitation, then she said, 'Well – Sarek, we can deal with later. But Spock – I have drawn my own assumptions as to what those men did to you. I won't ask you if I'm wrong or right. But – is it possible that you are focussing on the ills of *all* humans because you are wary of comparing those men too closely to James Kirk?'

'It – is ridiculous to believe I could compare them to – him,' Spock said instantly, a little too quickly.

'Is it, Spock?' she asked. 'Is it really ridiculous to believe that you are afraid admitting that the one person you have let beyond your defences is a man just like those other men? Isn't it easier to believe that a whole species is bad than to focus your fear on the one person who is closest to you?'

Spock let his head fall, his eyes staring at his hands, and at the pink tinted fingers of his mother smoothing over the olive of his own skin.

'I – could not bear to lose him,' he said, his voice surprising even himself by coming out as a half-choked whisper.

'You will not lose him,' his mother said with a rare steel in her voice, her hand tightening on his. 'As long as you let yourself get through this, you will not lose him.'

'When I see him, I see them,' Spock said, his voice continuing in a whisper.

The pain in his throat was a familiar one – he had had countless conversations with his mother in this room as a child, with the pain of tears he refused to release lodging in his throat. But things had changed so much since then…

'Spock, there are humans that evolve and humans that seem not to,' his mother said softly, wrapping her other hand around his. 'We're a young race – we're still on the cusp of understanding. But amongst us there are a great few who have reached further than the rest, grasping out at something better than we have now, seeking to sow and cultivate the best in humanity. I can't pretend that I know him as well as you do, but I believe that James Kirk is one of those humans.'

Spock raised his head, his eyes curiously misted with moisture.

'Acknowledge that he *could* be like them,' his mother said. 'And then you will be able to acknowledge that he is *not* like them. Each human – each Vulcan, each Andorian or Rigelian – is utterly unique. Cruelty isn't a human thing. It's a personal thing. Would he ever intentionally hurt you?'

'He – has saved me, countless times,' Spock admitted. 'He saved me this time…'

He remembered that moment of looking up, of seeing Jim standing there, and despair collapsing into relief. In that brief moment he had harboured no thought of Jim being like those men. He had been a saviour.

'Samek – did not ask me to consider this,' he said eventually.

'Perhaps Samek didn't expect *love* to enter the equation,' his mother reminded him softly.

'No,' Spock said. He looked up, meeting his mother's eyes. 'No, perhaps he did not… Mother, would you leave me?' he asked carefully. 'I require – time to meditate.'

Her hand pressured harder on his for a moment, and then she smiled, and let go.

'Of course, Spock,' she said. 'Take all the time you need. You know where I'll be.'

'In your garden,' Spock nodded.

She smiled again. 'In the kitchen, making *lak-toi,*' she corrected him. 'I think later on you and your father and I will need to sit down to talk, and we all know sharing *lak-toi* makes the process much pleasanter.'

Spock allowed a hint of a smile onto his lips.

'That is very true,' he nodded. 'I will come find you, when I am ready.'

His mother got to her feet, touching Spock briefly on the shoulder before leaving the room. Spock gazed after her for a long moment, then suddenly realised he had been staring profitlessly at the shut door for almost a minute. He shook himself, clenching his hands together, then stretching out his fingers.

He switched the computer screen back on, and the image of Tarsus flickered into life again. He let his eyes rest on it again, seeing the faces of the survivors. They were many, blurred and poorly resolved in the small image – but he could still read the swathe of emotions that were obviously passing through their minds. A few had a blank look of repressed shock that he could easily identify with, but many were pouring their emotions out without shame.

Jim had been one of that crowd… A small, young, unprotected Jim, caught on Tarsus by the most unfortunate chance of his life, and only an order away from an unceremonious death. The young and weak, the sick and abandoned, had been the first to suffer in Kodos's carefully worked out solution. One slightly altered decision, and his Jim would have been halted in his life at the age of thirteen, and Spock's universe would have been a very different place.

He shut down Samek's programme, and switched the terminal from computer function to communicator function. He opened a channel, inputting the correct codes and permissions without conscious thought. The screen remained blank for precisely fifteen point three seconds – and then it flickered into life, and that so-familiar face appeared, warmed with a smile.

'Jim,' Spock said simply.

He did not need to say more than that. Without even waiting for expansion Jim said, 'I've already got the permission, Spock. I just need to hand some things over to Scotty, and then I'll be in the Copernicus ready to leave. It's only fifteen hours from here by shuttle.'

Spock closed his eyes very briefly, covering a swell of emotion that was threatening to reach the surface. Then he nodded.

'I anticipate your arrival, Jim,' he said. Then he cut the communication. The meditation he had proposed a few minutes ago would be sorely needed. He thought it would probably be the most important time of reflection in his life.