Disclaimer. In the words of Barlett:"I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own." I think that's clear enough.


This one is for Junesun. For the nicest review ever. Thanks, that was awesome. I squeezed it in during my lunch break.


Wherever they were going, they were making good time.

Judging from the vibrations of his chair, Kirk estimated the speed of the Klingon ship to be at warp six. That was interesting. It was the top speed the Enterprise could make without straining any either the engines or any extraneous systems. He wondered if the Klingons meant his ship to follow.

He sure as hell hoped not.

He would be super pissed if something happened to his girl.

Kirk wondered if Spock would follow. Would the Enterprise be able to follow? What was going on with the other three war birds? As far as Kirk knew, they weren't keeping station with the ship he was on.

But then, he knew very little. Since Kirk's encounter with angering Ka'tal the Klingon had made himself scarce. No wonder, after that confrontation. Kirk smirked. But then his face fell. No one had talked to Kirk in what felt like hours, so he had little sense of anything. He was incredibly bored.

All he knew was that wherever they were going, they were going there fast.

Interesting.

Kirk guessed they'd been traveling for at least a day.

He wracked his mind to remember all the star systems through which they could currently be passing, but then he let it go as an exercise in futility. He would be able to guess better when the ship dropped from warp. Because that way he'd have an idea of how they would've come from where they were.

If they stopped right now, there were only five star systems that could be reached at this speed. Only three had class M planets. So that narrowed it down a bit.

Where were they going? And what did they want with him?

The same unanswerable questions swam in his mind.

He guessed he would just have to wait until they got there. Wherever there was.

Kirk hated waiting.

If he had been on the Enterprise, he would have been pacing the bridge. The movement kept him calm. Bones liked to complain that Jim couldn't sit patiently for anything. It was true.

He couldn't.

The captivity was wearing on him. He wanted desperately to just explode out of his chair and to hit something.

A smart strategist would be either be plotting escape or using the time alone to sleep and reserve their strength.

Kirk had tried sleeping. It had sucked.

He had no sooner closed his eyes than they popped open again, alerted by some strange sound on the alien vessel.

It smelled funny in here.

Might be the Klingon food. Hmmm. Come to think on it, they hadn't fed him. But they were supposed to keep him alive. That meant they couldn't be too far from wherever they were going. Good.

So down to three systems then. Maybe. That was good.

Spock could find him with only three systems. Kirk's faith in his first officer was such that he thought that Spock could find anything anywhere, if he only put his mind to it.

Kirk grinned to himself.

He was not going to allow himself to despair. Not yet.

There was hope.

Kirk returned to bagging his head against the head rest. Maybe he could annoy someone into coming out to stop him.


James Kirk had been missing for twenty-five hours. Twenty-five of the longest hours of Spock's life. Spock imagined that he had not been this ….disconcerted since the implosion of his home planet.

He was not nervous. Nor was he worried. Spock was not experiencing either emotion. Nor was he experiencing any other emotion that he would admit to.

Spock was simply…disconcerted.

It seemed the appropriate word for the way he felt.

He did not like sitting in the captain's chair. It was without a doubt, a comfortable chair. In his mind, it had become, however illogically, not the captain's chair, but Jim's chair, and Spock did not appreciate the experience of sitting in it.

He wished the captain were back and seated here. There was much he wished.

But now was not the appropriate time for that.

A second terse communication with Admiral Nogura had confirmed that reinforcements were on the way to support the crew of the Enterprise in the undertaking of the rescue of their captain.

Starfleet was sending Admiral Pike as well as the Calypso.

If Spock were to admit to any feelings on the matter, it would have been to a sense of relief. The face of Christopher Pike would be a welcome one. He knew the crew of the flagship, and he both understood and sympathized with their reaction to their captain. Jim mattered deeply to Pike.

Spock was gratified that Starfleet command had not sent someone unfamiliar with James Kirk. It would be difficult to explain the open hostility of the crew to anyone else attempting to sit in the command seat. While the crew of the Enterprise was welcoming under normal circumstances, it could be very protective against perceived threat or insult to its captain. And no one would aboard would accept anything less than the complete retrieval of the captain.

But Spock doubted the bridge crew would glare at Christopher Pike. They had all served under him before, and trusted his abilities to lead. Spock likewise welcomed the Admiral's imminent arrival.

Spock was nervous that his concern for Jim might be rendering him unfit for command due to emotional compromise.

He hoped that was not the case. Spock was going to find the other man if it was the last thing he did.

Kirk had always been able to affect him when others were not. Spock truly did not know how the captain did it. Surely it could not be intentional.

But every time the captain acted he inspired some sort of emotional response in Spock, whether positive or negative. Spock thought that in the two years he had spent under Kirk's command, he had experienced a greater range of emotions than he had in the rest of his twenty seven solar years.

For some reason also, it was Kirk's eyes that affected him most strongly.

They were such an impossible color.

Spock had never seen another being with eyes the same color as Jim's. Sometimes Spock wondered if they were that color because of some strange effect of the trauma surrounding the captain's birth. Perhaps intermittent ion radiation surges from the Narada's shields had somehow affected the baby's ocular development. Whatever the reason, Spock was fascinated with the eyes of Jim Kirk.

He had heard it said of humans that eyes were the windows to their souls. That was often true of the captain. Especially when the man was pleased. However, when the man was displeased, it was frequently untrue. When James Kirk wanted to, he could hide his emotions from all but those who knew him infinitely well.

Spock found it ironic that the mask of logic he himself had worked so hard to create was something he did not like to see upon his captain's face. When Spock had first encountered Kirk, he had thought him too expressive, too uncontrolled. And now, when Spock saw control upon his captain's features, it was the first officer's clue to speak to the captain about what was so terribly troubling the other man.

Everything about the captain was …illogical.

Ironic, also.

The captain would have been pleased to hear it. Kirk could regard such sentiments as a compliment. An image of the captain's smile appeared clearly in the first officer's mind.

But that brought to mind the last time Spock had seen Kirk.

Limp in the Klingon's arms. Covered in blood. So very, very red. Nearly unrecognizable.

Spock's chest seized. For a moment, he wondered if he was having a heart attack.

How. How could one man affect him so utterly?

Spock could not await for Admiral Pike to arrive. He needed to mediate, to regain his controls. Then he could focus more properly upon retrieving his captain, and dispel these circular thoughts.


Just a quick update, which I wrote over lunch. Just so you know, this speed of writing turnaround is very atypical of me, so please do not expect it often. But I hope you liked it. Review it for me if you did. I write faster when I feel like you want to read more.

PS...Secret Thought. Thank you so very much. I cannot tell you how much it meant to me.