Author's Notes:

The mystery of Spock's deliciously disheveled hair: EXPLAINED!

Fallchild92- oh my god, you're thinking about drawing me a picture? That would be AMAZING.

Lady Merlin- I know, those hortas really did look like food! To me they looked like giant, territorial pancakes lol. I was so mad when one leapt on Spock, I was like "PANCAKE OF EVIL- FREE SPOCK RIGHT NOW OR I WILL ADD BLUEBERRIES TO YOU AND EAT YOU WITH SYRUP!"

Plot: This is Spock's morning, up until he leaves to go to the Bridge, where something with Admiral Kates (though he doesn't know it yet) is about to go down...haha. I'm kind of awful, posting his POV of the day in two chapters. It's going to get interesting, folks. Kates is a nasty piece of work.

The Understanding

They are walking together, him and the Captain, in the bottom of a ravine. It is narrow; not wide enough for two to stand abreast, and so they walk one ahead of the other, Jim taking the lead. As Spock notes the layers of rock and their color and textual differences, Jim laughs, taking his arm, pulling him along. Convincing him.

"It's not far. We can come back later to document..."

The chasm twists and turns ahead of them, and rises thousands of feet past their heads. The only way out is through, but he doesn't know where they are going, only that he follows regardless. Air moves through the ravine, touching their faces, moving their hair. The warm wind brings with it the fragrant scent of honeysuckle, laced with the dry aroma of heat and dust. Spock is no stranger to heat nor deserts; the sight, though unlike Vulcan, should invoke pleasant memories in the similarities that it does share with his perished home planet.

But instead the wind brings fear to him. There is something different about it, something wrong.

It's not a smell, not a sound- he's trying to explain even as his friend goes around a bend, momentarily lost from sight- they should turn around, they should not walk further-

And that's when he realizes it, realizes what he's forgotten to understand. Spock turns the corner, already calling out an alarm-

But it's too late, because Jim is already gone.

And he's running- because he already knows what he will find.

Spock sits up in his bed, eyes wide. He blinks back sweat from his eyes and pushes his damp hair back from his face with an unsteady hand, not caring about the unkempt result. His blanket lies twisted and discarded on the floor. He breathes fast; his hands fall from his forehead and clutch the sheets, white knuckled; an inappropriate, unconscious gesture of emotion.

In the depths of his fear, he cannot bring himself to care.

Rarely does he experience night terrors- yet when he does he is able to control his fear; rationalize it until he is aware that the situation he is experiencing is plausibly unlikely, and that his experience of it is unreal. He imposes order on such dreams; rearranges them lucidly until the unpleasant stimuli ceases to affect him.

This time, he could not-for the simple reason that the fear projected in this dream is a rational one, a fear that has credibility, probability. A fear that in the world of his dream he could not seem to control. The missions lately have been dangerous. Two men were critically injured on Thiristher. McCoy's medical expertise proved influetial in saving them, but-

But.

It is useless to ruminate on events that have not occurred.

He does not move for almost five minutes. Instead, he regulates his breathing patterns, reaching for his meditative center, seeking to calm himself.

The terror only slightly abates. It is the wild fear of loss; the sudden feeling of wrongness in the air as a mother realizes her child has wandered off in a crowded place; the keen, desperate ache after the passing of a loved one. It is the panic of bad news; the crushing sensation that something irreplaceable has disappeared forever, taken to a place he can never follow.

His blood burns. His hands tingle. The images of the canyon haunt him. The smell of honeysuckle lingers in his thoughts, and sickens him. And the heat of the gorge and the echoes of their footsteps on the rock reminds Spock only too much of another. Of another who he watched, who he was too late to save. But Jim still lives. The unthinkable has not occurred. His friend lives. He comforts himself with this, reminding himself of reality, attempting to detach himself from the realm of sleep where all things terrible seem possible.

Jim is alive. He focuses on this, and his relief is overwhelming.

A faint memory, lapped in love, swims through his mind, of his mother's voice, comforting him as a child.

It was only a dream, sweetheart. It was only a dream.

Standing, Spock crosses the room and lifts a framed picture from where it rests on the table. It is not a holocube, but an actual printed photograph, framed in dark wood, its surface protected by a thin layer of glass.

Underneath a wood veranda, her hair swept into her face by the wind, Amanda smiles, Sarek at her side. Her brown eyes are alight with joy and warmth- that she does not bother to conceal.

His heart aches.

"This is one of the few photographs left, Spock," she had said, love and nostalgia mingling in her voice. "Holo's are replacing everything, aren't they?"

He misses the sound of her laugh.

Replacing the photograph with care, his eyes lift from her face to the chronometer on his bedside table.

He has exactly five minutes to prepare for his shift. Anxiety seizes him once again, then irritation. Both emotions are hurriedly overlaid with a prepared sense of calm. Disregarding a morning meal, he dresses methodically, fingers pausing and clumsy as he laces his boots. This simple action reminds him again of the Captain, and of the previous night.

At this thought, of Jim, his mind finally settles.

Every man must know what he is capable of. What he can and can't do. He must understand his limitations and his greatest strengths, and be willing to examine them, in all their detail, whether they prove a source of pride or of shame. Spock acquaints himself with his fear. He mulls it over, tastes the flavor of it, accepts that it will not change. He makes friends with it, understanding it is to be from now on an ever-present companion. But if he understands it, he can move past it, although he knows it will never truly leave. Spock is afraid for his friend. But with the fear comes determination. He will not allow the Captain to be killed in duty, out of error, from angry hands and clouded thoughts and cruelty.

As he leaves his quarters, his gaze rest once more on the image of his mother.

He has lost Amanda, one of the people he cared for most in the universe.

He cannot bear to lose the other.


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