Spock woke in the cool of morning, cosseted by the covers around him. It had been two days since the funerals and a large amount of the tension had left the house, as if it has been laid to rest with the bodies. That was not to say there was no grief. Spock could still feel that thick in the air, especially since Peter's older brothers were both staying on for a while, but there was a less brittle feeling to it now. Perhaps the mourners were starting to move on.
Spock desired greatly to move on too. He and Jim were not scheduled to be in San Francisco for another week, and his course did not start until ten days from now. Still, Spock wanted to move on, to be on his own with Jim, to be actively moving towards some kind of resolution for his situation. He wanted independence again, to regain his own person.
He got up out of the bed very quietly, determined not to wake Jim. Jim had been permanently on duty as a carer for weeks now. It would do him good to sleep in.
He dressed in the clothes that Jim had diligently left out for him the night before, and walked with great care out of the bedroom. It appeared that everyone else was asleep. There was no sound from the rest of the house and he could sense no wakeful minds.
The board floor and its rugs were soft under his feet. He walked quietly to the stairs, his hand held out in front of him and feeling carefully until he found first the corner of the wall into the stairwell, and then the wooden rail that ran down the side. He went downstairs and over to the cupboard in the hall where all of the shoes were kept. Here things became a little more difficult. There were shoes belonging to Jim, shoes for Peter, for Winona Kirk, and adult male sized shoes for Peter's older brothers too. He could feel them all lined up on the shelves in there, and he had no idea where his might be because he had not put them away. He knelt down and began to feel over the different pairs until he had narrowed it down to three. Then he began a fingertip search, and eventually picked up one pair and delicately sniffed. These were his, he was sure.
He carefully pulled on the boots, just as carefully folding down and pushing away the frustration that had risen on having to waste so much time just finding footwear that he previously would have identified with one glance. He had next to feel amongst the coats hanging up to find his. It was chilly in the house, and it would be colder outside. He judged the time to be about seven a.m.
Jim would be worried, he knew, but he also knew that if he suggested going outside alone that the captain would quickly find ten different reasons why he should not. He wanted the chance to be outside alone, and he did not want to have to argue for that right.
As he moved towards the door, reaching out, his hand clattered into what seemed to be a stand of sticks and umbrellas. At the last moment he decided to take out one of the lightweight walking poles. He knew that the blind often used canes, and this would serve a similar purpose. He had received no training, but he understood the principles, and it could not be hard to use a stick.
The door was bolted and locked, but the key, an old-fashioned metal thing that one had to turn, had been left in the lock. As he passed his hands over the door he felt the cold smoothness of a pane of glass. Was it clear or perhaps frosted or coloured as he had seen before on Earth? He would have to ask Jim. There was no need to know, but there was a want.
The door open, Spock stepped out onto the boarding about the house, and then froze.
How could this feel so strange? He stood very still, the stick in one hand, listening. He could hear birds in the distance. Perhaps that meant it was light, but he could see no light. There was no difference to his eyes between being inside the shaded house and standing out in what could be the full light of day. He turned his head slowly, trying to feel any change in warmth, but there was nothing. If the sun was up, perhaps it was too early to be able to feel its warmth, or perhaps it was hidden behind clouds.
He could remember precisely what it had been like here on his few trips from the house, but his knowledge was narrowed down, a restricted path that existed only where his feet had trod. There were four steps down from this wooden veranda, and then some kind of path which gave way to grass on either side. The path, he thought, was not paved or gravelled but simply trodden earth which sometimes was re-colonised by grass. There were trees over to the right. To the left was where the air cars had waited to take them to the funeral, and also where they had been returned later that day by taxi.
He pushed the stick out ahead cautiously, and it touched the edge of the veranda just where he remembered the steps to be. He navigated the steps carefully, and found himself on the earth path. He was aware of the bulk of the house behind him, and the openness of the land before him. He had no real objective. He simply wanted to know if he were capable of being alone, of going somewhere without constantly touching another person's arm.
He began to walk, trying to keep his pace relatively normal. He did not want to shuffle across the ground. He held the stick in front of him, occasionally tapping the end onto the ground but mostly just holding it as if in defence against solid that might be in his way. At some point he lost the path and did not regain it.
The stick clattered into something solid, and he stopped, reaching out tentatively. It felt like a fence made of wood. He supposed it would be likely that the Kirks would have a fence around the yard. Presumably there would be a gate, but was it to the left of where he stood, or the right? There seemed little way to tell except by feeling his way along. But really, did he wish to stand in the yard feeling his way along a fence just to prove to himself that he could be independent?
It was that or return to the house. He considered the position of the house behind him and its relation to the angle of the fence. The gate was most likely to be to the right, according to logic, and humans often followed a most conventional form of logic when it came to the outsides of their homes. He turned right accordingly, and after a few metres was rewarded by the introduction of a thicker post, and then what felt like a gate. He opened it and stepped through.
What would be here? Was this still the Kirks' land or was there a public highway out here? He felt with the stick, tapping the end onto the ground. Trodden earth again, dry and hard. He walked forward until the earth broke up, rose a little, and was replaced with the hardness of some kind of metalled road surface. Now, this would be the test. He stood very still, taking in what was around him. The light sound of wind in the trees behind him. The occasional creak of some part of the house. That would be useful. Sounds of birds and animals. It all built up a picture. He needed to be able to recognise this place for his return.
He turned right, and set out along the road, walking slowly and carefully, holding the stick before him. The surface was smooth and hard under his feet and easy to walk on, but after a time he stumbled as it dropped away under his left foot and jarred his ankle.
He caught himself, and stood still for a moment, suppressing the pain in the tendon and assessing what had happened. Evidently, thinking he was walking in a straight line, he had wandered across the road and slipped off the edge. The road was raised about ten inches above the level of the land. He touched his fingers to the ground and felt hard crumbling earth, perhaps the edge of a field. He would have to be more careful. He walked back to the other side of the road, about six paces, and this time he touched the end of the walking pole to the ground, making sure as he carried on along his route that he kept checking for the side of the road with the end of the pole. The light tapping noise was one of the few sounds in this vast space.
The road continued straight and level. At one point he heard the low murmur of a vehicle which crept up on him slowly and then passed, causing a small billow of wind, before fading into the distance ahead of him. This was most probably a public road, then.
After some time he stopped walking. He had proven that he could leave the house alone and make progress outside – but progress to what end? Where was he? What had he really achieved? Perhaps a truer test would have been calling a cab and visiting the local town, perhaps visiting a shop or a cafe. But that, he knew, was something far beyond his skills at the moment, and that thought weighed on him heavily. He could walk along a road, that was true, but that was so far from a reappropriation of normal life that had he been human he would have laughed.
Suddenly he felt very far from home, if he could call Jim's farm home. As he stood still in this black wilderness he grew aware of how very helpless he was. He could turn around and walk back along the road, and he knew approximately how far he should need to walk to get back to the house, but what skill was that? What was to his right and left? What possible chance for improvement could there be?
Something approaching fury and bitter resentment welled up in him, and he was not sure he had the will to calm it and push it away. How could his life have descended to this point, where he was walking along a level highway at the pace of a toddler and calling it an achievement? What possible future could he even consider having in Starfleet? What future did he have with Jim as his nursemaid? Perhaps it would be most logical to just continue walking along this road until he found a town with a public comm system and to arrange passage back to Vulcan and his parents' home, and cut every tie with his previous, active, vital life. He could perhaps eventually go to Gol, rid himself of this destructive pall of emotions.
He sank down on the side of the road, holding the stick loosely between his hands, caught and cast down in this sudden mire of emotion. The idea of walking to the next town was ridiculous. This was big, open country. He might walk for miles. When he did find a town, how would he use the comm system? He was incapable of the most basic of tasks. Without Jim's help he could not even be sure that his clothing was clean and matched.
He pressed his hands over his face, trying desperately to control these surges of negative emotion. There was little logic to these feelings. He knew that despite his feeling them. This was the voice of depression insinuating itself inside his mind.
'Uncle Spock? Uncle Spock!'
His head jerked up. He had been so enmeshed in his own emotions that he had not even heard the boy approach, but there was only one person who would call him that. Jim had suggested it, over Spock's objections.
'Peter?' he asked.
The boy's footsteps sped up, thudding hard against the road surface. He was running, his breath coming in short pants as he got closer. When he was a few feet away, he stopped.
'Uncle Spock, are you all right? I saw you go out of the house...'
Spock straightened up, trying to compose himself. 'You followed me?'
'Not right away, but I came down and you weren't in the house and I saw your shoes were gone so I got worried...'
Spock raised an eyebrow.
'How did you know which way I had gone?' he asked.
'You can see a ways along the road. It's straight and flat.'
'Of course,' Spock said. He must not allow himself to feel the bitterness that threatened to rear up. He must not envy young Peter his sight. He had lost so much.
'Are you all right, Uncle Spock?' Peter asked again.
Spock exhaled slowly, and nodded. 'I am – all right,' he said, although without much conviction.
'Yeah, and the other one's got bells on it,' Peter said.
'I beg your pardon, young man?' Spock asked, utterly bewildered, lifting his head.
He heard Peter's feet shuffle on the ground. The boy sat down next to him on the edge of the road, not close enough to touch him, but close enough that Spock could sense his nearness.
'Pull the other one, it's got bells on it,' Peter replied. 'Don't they – don't they say that on Vulcan, sir?'
Spock immediately thought of the ceremonial Vulcan bell frames, but it did not help explain the saying.
'They do not say that on Vulcan,' he affirmed.
'It means – aww, I guess it means I think you're kidding. I asked you if you were all right and you said yes, but I don't think you're telling the truth, not for a moment, Uncle Spock.'
'Vulcans do not lie,' Spock said.
'You can pull the other one on that, too. I know that's not true.'
Spock sighed at this young child's perception. 'You are right, it is not true. I am not all right. But there is little that either one of us can do to remedy the situation, so there is little point in discussing it.'
'Uncle Jim says talking can cure most anything. Grandma does too.'
A powerful and inexplicable wave of fear passed through Spock before he could combat it. Here he was, far away from Jim's home, he knew not where, just him and this young boy. He could not hear the wind catching in trees or on buildings. The world around him was quite beyond his reach.
He caught that fear and managed it with some effort.
'Talking does not cure blindness,' Spock said.
'Talking doesn't bring people back to life either,' Peter said, his voice a little lower, sounding weary. 'But – gee, Uncle Spock, it did help some. I talked a lot to grandma and I talked a lot to Uncle Jim and I talked a lot more to my big brothers when they came, and I feel better, a bit. I really do.'
'Peter – ' Spock began. He had been about to say, My case is different, but how could he say that to a boy of this age, a boy who had been bereaved of both parents and transported to another world? No one that Spock knew had died in the last weeks. His case was entirely different, but he could not measure his own grief against Peter's.
'What, Uncle Spock?' Peter asked.
Spock shook his head. 'I imagine you must have felt lost on arriving here on Earth,' he said quietly.
'Yeah, a bit, I guess,' Peter replied. 'I – guess you feel lost too, don't you?'
Spock was not sure how to reply. It was very far from his habit to talk about his feelings, but he also did not want to rebuff this young man who was reaching out to him at such a difficult time in his own life.
'Yes,' he said simply after a while. 'Yes, I do feel lost.'
'Do you want me to take you home?'
Spock allowed the corner of his mouth to twitch at the simplicity of Peter's solution. He stretched out his legs, flexing his sore ankle, and then stood up. He stepped back up onto the hard road surface and stood there. The darkness felt very complete.
'That would be very kind of you,' he said graciously.
Peter hesitated. 'Uh. Do you need to – '
'Just walk with me,' Spock assured him.
He touched the end of the stick to the ground, and began to walk. Peter fell in step alongside him, walking protectively on the outside of the road, nearest to the ragged edge. They walked in silence, but after a while Peter said, 'There's another house over there, far out across the fields. Looks old. It's a board house like grandma's.' He was quiet again, then said, 'That field over there's not ploughed up. There are animals on it. I think they might be cows. I haven't seen cows in real life before.'
Spock walked on and let the boy prattle, soaking up his naïve descriptions of the country through which they passed. Meanwhile, the rest of his thoughts wandered, now he did not have to focus so intently on where he was and in which direction he was travelling.
Peter's hand touched his arm. 'Sir. Uncle Spock.'
He turned distractedly towards the boy. 'What is it, Peter?'
'You're not quite straight, sir,' he said, sounding embarrassed.
'Ah,' Spock replied, and let Peter turn him back in the right direction.
He fell back into his thoughts as Peter continued to talk about the surrounding countryside. He wondered if Jim had woken up yet, if he were worried. If he were awake he would be bound to be worrying. Spock did not want to constantly be a source of worry and concern. He frowned slightly, wondering if there were any way he could persuade Jim to return to the ship, to stay away until he had – if he could – recovered his independence and skills. But – he did not want to be away from Jim. He needed him, not because of Spock's many incapabilities at this time, but because Jim created the whole that Spock had been searching for all his life. He did not want to spend his evenings alone, to wake up alone, to eat alone. He had done that for long enough. He simply wanted this intolerable situation to be gone, to have some measure of independence, to be able to restore his relationship with Jim to normal.
'Peter, are we close to the house?' he asked.
'Uh – yeah, pretty close,' the boy replied. 'Hey, I think Uncle Jim's looking for you. He's in the front yard.'
Spock caught it then, a feeling of tension and anxiety like the smell of venom in the air. He reached out to his partner's mind, trying to impart a sense of reassurance. There was a moment of confusion, and then their thoughts touched, meshed, and he felt Jim's slacken and settle closer to calm. He kept projecting wordless thoughts of reassurance as Peter started telling him how far they were from the house, and he heard then Jim's footsteps coming towards them in a light jog.
'D'you think we're in trouble, Uncle Spock?' Peter asked in a quiet voice.
Spock raised an eyebrow, momentarily inwardly amused at that thought.
'I have no doubt, Peter,' he said. 'But there is no need to concern yourself. We have done nothing wrong, and I will explain just so to your uncle.'