Ms. McKirk: Thank you!

Mark: You're not tired now. No excuses this time :D

Andrina Sparda: thanks for all the feedback! I felt bad for Chekov in ch. 9 too… poor kid. I hope Sulu cheered him up (platonic or not, either way. lol)

Hazgarn: God's belief in algebra is only logical. :)

xx

May 2258

Narada

Alpha Quadrant

xx

As Kirk navigated the watery tunnels, he thought about the two fragments of personality he'd gleaned from Sylar's subconscious. He couldn't shake the feeling that it wasn't right, that his acting captain was somehow actually two different people at once.

He also couldn't shake the knowledge that he was unreasonably drawn to him. It felt as though in order to keep the fragile fabric of space intact, he had to be as close to the Vulcan as possible. It was completely ridiculous, because he seemed the last possible man who would need protection; but Kirk knew now that underneath the poised surface was a volcano of emotion, waiting to erupt.

Kirk couldn't decide yet if he was excited or frightened.

xx

Sylar, meanwhile, was navigating through the bowels of the Narada, the red matter in his possession and one glorious thought in his mind.

Claire.

He had it now, a gigantic orb of hope and a ship of his own that didn't have thousands of people on board. Grabbing the controls, he blasted a hole in the side of the Romulan vessel, and shot out into the black vacuum of space, intending to head in the direction of Neptune, away from Starfleet and prime directives.

The first thing he saw was his home planet.

It had been over a century since he left Earth with his family for Vulcan. Somewhere on that globe, a miniscule speck among specks, was the last home he'd shared with Claire. Briefly, he wondered if the hostas still grew in the backyard. If the saplings they'd planted had grown into tall oaks. If there was another young couple living there now, sharing small joys and small tragedies, exchanging kisses, making love…

He turned the ship around.

xx

Kirk came around the corner, fired his phaser to take down a Romulan, and ran over to his captain.

"What're you doing here?" Pike demanded weakly.

"Just following orders," replied Kirk, removing the restraints. As he threw off the last strap, Pike grabbed Kirk's phaser and blasted two Romulans, stopping them in their tracks.

"Enterprise, now!" shouted Kirk, helping Pike to his feet.

The next instant found Kirk and Pike standing next to Sylar, safe in the transporter room aboard the Enterprise.

Kirk's face relaxed into an easy grin. "Nice timing, Scotty."

He gave an ecstatic chuckle. "I've never beamed three people from two targets onto one pad before!"

Immediately, Bones and Chapel rushed in, Chapel scanning the captain with a tricorder. Sylar and Kirk took off for the bridge at once.

"Captain, the enemy ship is losing power," Chekov reported, looking up at Sylar. "Their shields are down, sir."

Sylar and Kirk exchanged a look.

"Fire everything we have," came Sylar's sour order.

Kirk turned to the acting captain in surprise.

"Sometimes," Sylar said flatly, "a feeling is so strong and so right that it is only… logical to listen to that feeling."

"Murder?" came Kirk's incredulous reply.

Sylar's eyes glittered. "No." His voice was soft. "There was no malicious intent, Jim. I only sought justice."

"Revenge," he submitted.

Sylar was silent for a moment. "Precisely."

xx

Once the Enterprise had escaped the pull of the black hole, they began the slow trip back to Earth without warp drive. Kirk excused himself from the bridge and made his way down to sickbay, tingling at the prospect of seeing his father.

"Bones," Kirk greeted his friend, with an affable slap on the back. "Spock said--"

Bones stared back at him, round-eyed. "Christ, Jim. There's no question about it. Your dad's here."

"Spock said he could bring him," Kirk whispered. "Both his mother and my father."

"Yeah. Yeah, Amanda's here, too."

"How the hell—"

"Jim?"

Kirk looked past Bones to see a near-mirror image of himself, still dressed in the old blue Starfleet uniform. "Dad?"

George grinned.

"How did he get you here?" he blurted out.

"Your friend. Spock."

"Yeah, but how'd he—I mean, did you transport?"

George shook his head. "I was talking to your mother. You'd just been born. And all of a sudden, just before the Kelvin crashed into that other ship, he just—appeared. Put a hand on my shoulder. And then we were here."

Bones' eyes got even rounder. "D'you think…"

"What?" Kirk said.

"My healing ability. Maybe Spock—maybe Spock can move through time."

"He's a Vulcan. I thought this was about being descended from the evolved humans that were all supposedly killed during the American Holocaust."

"He's half-Vulcan," Bones argued. "Maybe Amanda…"

Kirk went directly into the next room to find her. "You're Spock's mom," he proclaimed, arriving at her bedside.
She smiled. "Yes."

"Were—are you descended from any evolved humans?"

"Evolved humans? No." She furrowed her brow. "Why?"
"We were just wondering how Spock got you two on this ship," replied Kirk.

"Oh—it was Sylar," Amanda said. "He's a friend of the family—he's an evolved human. He's been alive for centuries—"

"Sylar?" Bones spat out the word. "You're friends with Sylar?"

"It wasn't a human," George said at the same time. "I distinctly remember a Vulcan taking me off the ship. And then when we got here, he told me that my son was a friend of his. He put his hand on my shoulder—"

"And then you were here," whispered Amanda. Suddenly, her eyes widened. "Oh, no."

"Please, for Christ's sake," Bones interjected, "tell me that Sylar is not on this ship."

Kirk turned to Bones. "What do you have against this guy?" he demanded.

Bones exploded. "He's a goddamn murderer! He killed my fifth great-grandfather!"

"Your fifth… Bones, that doesn't even make sense!"

"Does this make sense?" he shouted, putting his hands to Kirk's face and healing the wounds he'd suffered on the Narada. "No! But it happens!"

"So you're telling me that Sylar can travel through time…"

"He can." Amanda was pale as ice. "He can also shape-shift," she continued, tears welling in her eyes. "I'm afraid—I'm afraid that the man on this ship isn't Spock at all."

xx

Later that night, after a long conversation in which Kirk filled his father in on the past twenty-five years and reassured him that his mother was alive and unmarried, he retired to his quarters.

Immediately, he went to the shower, cranking up the temperature and letting the steam fill the room as he peeled his uniform shirt off.

As the first officer, he knew, his duty was to keep the crew's best interests in mind. Having a serial killer for a captain wasn't exactly the greatest fate for the Enterprise. Then again, he reasoned, stepping into the hot water, Spock—Sylar—had been a full-fledged member of Starfleet for years. Under his assumed personality, he hadn't put a toe out of line. It seemed as though he'd given up on killing people. Wasn't it only right to give him a second chance?

No, said the nagging little voice in his brain. No, you're being lenient and you know it, and you know why.

And he did know why. That tangled-up mess of emotion in his gut was why. That knot of tension which tightened every time the Vulcan was within arm's length. The fact that Spock seemed to have his own gravitational pull when Kirk was in the vicinity. The imposing reality that Kirk felt like a sixth-grade girl whenever they had a conversation.

Oh, fuck.

Kirk slid down the wall of the shower and sat, letting the sharp jets of water pound into his aching back. He'd went there, his mind couldn't deny it any longer, and it was the worst time to have this revelation.

He pictured walking into a Recovering Addicts meeting.

"Hi. My name is Jim."

"Hi, Jim."

"Hi. Yeah… umm, I'm addicted to a shapeshifting serial killer who's been posing as a Vulcan for years."

He let out a sigh. Fuck. What am I going to do?