Notes: To summarise: Jim is not sick or dying. See below for who is. And please bear in mind that I'm a complete bastard for the duration of this work.


"When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure." - Unknown.


Spock's face made several shifts, cycling rapidly through multiple expressions and emotions, before settling back into that familiar zen acceptance that Jim knew so well, and projecting absolutely nothing of his final conclusion to Jim - but he did not retract his hands from Jim's grip.

"I'm sorry," Jim said. "It just didn't occur to me that you didn't know. I kind of...you know, I assume that everyone knows because obviously my family do, and Uhura and McCoy do, and...I just kind of assumed that you did too. Stupid, obviously, but...yeah. It's not me."

"Then...?"

Jim swallowed, dropping his gaze to their hands. "It's my Mom. She's...it's..."

"You do not have to tell me."

"It's a brain tumour," Jim blurted out, clenching his jaw. "She...she got sick a few years ago, and they took it out, but it came back, and this time, they can't. They can't operate. And none of the treatments worked, and it won't stop growing, so...so one day..."

Spock's fingers began to rub soothingly over Jim's.

"The doctors reckon she's...she'll go in the spring. That she...she might last until the summer, but..." Jim swallowed hard. "She's not capable of looking after herself, and I can't do it, so...so she needs to be here...and it's hard. It's hard. My Mom's...she's always been so...so alive, and now..."

"And now she is dying slowly, and it is almost as if you can watch the life draining from her with each passing day," Spock intoned deeply.

Jim bit his lip, peering up at Spock from under his eyebrows. "Is that...what it was like when...?"

"Yes," Spock said quietly. "But she did not die alone, Jim, and neither will your mother. And she died knowing, as will your mother, that she was loved."

Jim choked back a sob and threw his arms around Spock again, burying his face in that now-familiar and favourite spot of his neck. Spock seemed unsurprised by the action, folding his arms around Jim firmly again and holding on tightly until the tremors ceased.

"Come with me," Spock murmured, coaxing Jim to his feet and guiding him, an arm around his shoulders, back into the building. In mere moments, Jim found himself back in the small room opposite the lounge with the piano, stripped of his shoes and jacket, and tucked under a thin blanket like a sick child wanting to watch television.

"I should go to the hospital," he protested as Spock tucked one of the armchair cushions under his head. "I need to..."

"You need to rest," Spock said firmly, with no room for argument in his tone. "You are overly stressed and agitated, and while it is understandable, it is detrimental to your health and wellbeing."

And perhaps his pride demanded that he protest - but the rest of him demanded that, for once, he let somebody else take charge. He blinked - and slept.


Jim woke to a darkened room, a single lamp on the side table glowing dimly, and the faint strains of the piano floating through the closed door. He took a moment to straighten his hair and ensure he hadn't drooled over his own face or something, before slipping out and across the narrow corridor into the lounge.

It was full of people, both staff members in their white uniforms and soft smiles, and patients largely in their pyjamas, situated in ludicrously soft armchairs, or in wheelchairs under patchwork blankets whose colour combinations were an insult to the universe at large. Many of the patients were elderly, and accompanied by family or what looked to be partners. One very elderly woman, ninety if she was a day, smiled at Jim and beckoned him into the room when he paused in the doorway.

"It's Beethoven today," she said.

It wasn't. It very much wasn't. It was, in fact, a fast numbers that Jim guessed was from the 1940s or 1950s, and to his immense surprise, Uhura was singing whatever song it happened to be in a strong, warbling voice that reminded him somewhat of Ella Fitzgerald. She sang, and occasionally would pick on some of the staff or the more mobile patients to dance with her, and Spock played with serene ignorance of her activity, pouring his energy into the piano.

Jim had rarely seen people play the piano, and had always assumed them to move with the music the way violinists or guitarists or even trombonists did. Spock did not: his hands and his body seemed to be independent of each other. His fingers danced over the keys, never pausing for a moment longer than they were supposed to, and flitting over the keys as though they commanded him and not the other way around. But his body remained still and upright, spine shot into its perfect posture, and eyes never wavering from the keys. He had no music: he played apparently from memory, and the only sign of life in him was the fluid flicker of his fingers across the black-and-white weights, and the occasional twitch of his foot upon the pedals.

The song died away to scattered applause, and a nurse wheeled in a trolley behind Jim, stacked with plates. He took the opportunity, in the somehow chaotic-yet-organised lull of sharing out meals to approach Spock, who looked up at him from the piano with that same serene blankness.

"Hey," he said, pitching his voice low so as not to be overheard. "Thanks. For earlier."

"You are welcome," Spock replied quietly. "Are you well?"

"I think we discussed that," Jim chuckled guiltily, and perched on the edge of the piano stool when Spock shifted over. "I..."

"Ooh," one of the nearest patients - a woman withered with old age and seated in a wheelchair that had an oxygen tank affixed to the back - piped up excitedly, waving her plastic fork at Jim. "You were here the other week! You interrupted Wagner!"

Jim winced. "Uh, ye-eah, sorry about that."

"Oh, tosh!" she sniffed haughtily. "Good on you! I don't like Wagner. Nasty German music. You should play more French music. French music is lovely. Play some French music next week," she ordered imperiously.

"As you wish," Spock said, a tiny smile playing on his lips.

"So," she waved her fork at Jim again. "You. You're not German, are you? You're all blond and everything."

"Um, no ma'am," he said, though a snigger in the back of his head noted that large numbers of Iowan residences were descended from German immigrants. Still, he didn't think that counted.

"Good," she said. "Are you his boyfriend, then?"

Jim went purple in about half a second, and even darker when Uhura, obviously overhearing the entire thing, shot him a smirk from where she was assisting a young man in the transition between his wheelchair and a large sofa.

"Are you?" the old woman demanded.

"Er...yeah?" he said eventually, hoping desperately that this wasn't going to lead to an argument or - worse - sheer awkwardness between him and Spock.

"Well!" she puffed up, and the fork zipped around to jab in Spock's direction. "You! You didn't tell me! How am I meant to tell Robert all the gossip if you don't tell me things, hmm?"

"My apologies, Aggie," Spock said, quite seriously. "It merely slipped my mind, and I apologise. It will not happen again."

"You make sure it doesn't," she tutted, and eyed the pair of them suspiciously. "You're not very affectionate, are you? Nyota kisses her boyfriend. Come on! Can't have any of this silly nonsense! Pucker up!"

Jim felt like his face was about to explode, but Spock took the entire tirade with his usual serenity; he was clearly used to 'Aggie' and her demands, and he simply turned to plant a swift, chaste kiss on Jim's lips before rising from the stool.

"I only play until dinner," he said. "Come."

Jim followed him out into the main reception - abandoned and empty as usual - and took the opportunity to return the swift kiss with one of his own and a smile.

"She was a bit..."

"That is Aggie," Spock said, by way of explanation. "She likes to know what it is going on in other people's lives, and claims that she would like to take some...gossip...to her late husband upon her death."

"What's wrong with her?" Jim whispered.

"She has had a series of strokes," Spock said. "Technically, she is not terminally ill, but she is aged and has no family left. Nyota...made an exception for her. As she does for you."

"For me?" Jim looked surprised.

Spock's lips twitched. "It is not typical to allow unchecked people to come and go as they please."

Jim flushed a little, and smiled. "Yeah. Well. Thanks. I needed that."

"Yes, you did," Spock said simply.

Jim felt suddenly shy, as if he'd been shown something about Spock that was far more intimate and intense than sexual prowess and a sharp sense of well-hidden humour, and he reached out to catch Spock's fingers in his like a teenager on his first date.

"Come home with me?" he asked.

Spock's hand swivelled in his so that they were stood in the middle of the lobby, holding hands like they'd been ripped straight from some romantic chick-flick.

"Please?" Jim prompted.

"I would prefer to return to my own apartment," Spock said after a pause, and cocked his head. "However, you are quite welcome to join me."

Jim grinned, squeezed his hand - and kissed him.


"For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity." - William Penn.