A/N: this is a MS from "All Our Yesterdays". For those who didn't see the 'previous' ep, it was supposed to be 'Trouble with Tribbles'.
Five thousand years in the past.
He laughed in jubilation.
McCoy's fist caught him in the chest. Zarabeth backed away, eyes wide.
'Doctor? Is this a seizure, or are you simply your charming self? My lady, you need not be afraid of me.'
There was one matter he could concentrate on. No woman could compete.
'Spock! Wake up, man! We've gotta come back.' McCoy hissed throatily.
'What for? We have just set out. A whole world to explore, and perhaps, if Time permits, our records will survive and be retrieved.'
'And perhaps, if they are retrieved, you will have busted your beloved Directive to a paragraph!'
'It is entirely possible.'
'Well hell, man, what are we waiting for? Let's get out of here! I'm sorry, Miss,' he turned to their saviour, 'we cannot stay. Spock here is in love with another.'
Zarabeth was looking at him like Beauty herself - alone in perfection, aching for a loving heart. He kissed her hand reverently, and closed his eyes. No beauty could compete. His was a case of terminal loyalty.
A crime is a crime is a crime, but if one agrees to take full responsibility for his actions, than -
'Come on!' His sleeve was yanked. 'We must get out!'
Spock ground his teeth - this newfound freedom of self was highly distracting - and applied misdirection, which incidentally was also the truth.
'I am thinking.'
McCoy subsided. Spock heard faintly, his attention to outward stimuli waning: 'Forgive us. We are bound by duty.'
'And by your souls.' But no soul could compete.
There it was. A faint twang he had overlooked at first, unmistakable, growing stronger by the breath. A note in the symphony of life that sang in his blood, that sang Vulcan, that sang home. It was richer than he recalled, more proud than emeralds in queens' crowns, and more savage than all suns they'd passed.
His only desire, ambition, obligation, his everything would be to ensure that note sing away in the millennia to come. On the other pan of the scales lay two mortal lives and a Code he'd lived by since enlisting in Starfleet.
The one wrought by Federation to restrict Federation's rights and to enforce Federation's laws.
The one with many loopholes, but with a core of steel: the Prime Directive, as written by Vulcans. No other species was allowed to change that chapter in any way save translating it into their own language. Even Terrans did not dispute that - they had, initially, but were easily outmatched in logic.
The one Code he would defile by finding a way to save billions of his compatriots.
With an effort he dimly wondered at being capable of, Spock wrenched himself to what passed for the present. McCoy, feverish and sweating, was hugging the girl and murmuring words of encouragement into her ears. There was no way to tell how much time has passed, even his own sense of it was confused, probably by their passage. Their physiology could have passed the point of no return. Spock discarded the thought as an unproductive one. It was logical within the situation's parameters.
'You will need warm clothes to not get frostbite.'
McCoy blinked. His face wrinkled in puzzlement. Illogical, considering the amount of conversations they had led; one would assume the Doctor would have no difficulty understanding the simple observation. Spock shrugged, using a human gesture to placate a human. McCoy's teeth clanked shut. That meant he did not object. There were signs of terror on his face that Spock did not have, or feel compelled to search, an explanation for.
Spock turned his gaze to the woman. She stared back at him, and he saw in her eyes a will that would, perhaps, in other circumstances make her an acceptable wife for him. 'You would grace any Vulcan abode,' he told her, because she would have, and because he was not absolutely without compassion.
In five minutes, they went outside to find the way back to their time and their ship, and he told himself the pellets of ice on his face were just that.
