(I'm sorry, I'm not keeping up with reviews. I have a stinking cold. Life issues, injured husband. Ugh.)

'Spock, where the hell did you go?' Jim asked as soon as he reached the Vulcan and his young nephew. 'Peter, what were you thinking taking him – '

Spock interrupted immediately. 'Peter took me nowhere, Jim. I went alone. Peter came after me. I am an adult, and as such – '

Jim's concern was such that it had erupted into a fierce anger that seemed to fill the air around them. 'Spock, for God's sake, you're blind, you're not capable – '

Spock interrupted in a level, hard tone that would have reduced most ensigns on the Enterprise to rubble.

'Jim, I am neither a child nor mentally deficient. If I wish to go for a walk alone at any time of day I shall do so, without seeking permission or advice from you or anyone else. I am not under your command here, and – '

'Listen, Spock,' Kirk cut across again, then he hesitated, and Spock could feel his self consciousness. 'Pete, go into the house,' Jim said in a voice that demanded obedience. Spock heard the boy hurry away as Jim took hold of his elbow and nudged him forward. Spock walked with him, aware that something was about to explode and quite conscious that neither of them wanted to be in proximity of the house when it happened. The ground was quite level, thankfully, for Jim was pulling him angrily, not guiding him, until they had passed through the trees and out the other side. Spock's sense of helplessness and repressed anger only increased each time he stumbled and floundered on the uneven ground and Jim caught him and kept him upright.

'Look, Mister, I don't care if we're on the ship, on Earth, on Vulcan,' Jim snapped as soon as they were through the trees. 'You can't just disappear off like that. I woke up and you were gone, you weren't in the house. You didn't even have a comm. Anything could have happened.'

Spock kept his voice very level to counter Jim's anger. 'Anything could not have happened. I went for a walk along a straight, flat road. I have never heard that this is a particularly dangerous area of your country.'

'That's not the point,' Jim almost shouted.

'Captain,' Spock snapped, his own voice rising now as he stepped away from Jim's hand. 'Jim, if you continue to treat me in this way I will not permit you to stay with me in San Francisco. I will not return to the Enterprise. Do you understand this? Do you understand that you cannot hover over me as if I were a fragile infant, make my decisions for me, shelter me from every perceived harm? It is insupportable to live in this way. I cannot, and should not be expected to, endure it.'

'Spock, you're blind,' Jim tried again, his voice beginning to crack now as a softer kind of emotion broke through.

'Yes, Jim,' Spock returned. Jim's own grief softened his anger for a moment. 'But I am still Spock. I am still everything that I was before.'

'God, Spock, this is so hard,' Jim said, his voice plaintive as he turned away.

Fury welled up in Spock then, uncontrolled, billowing out, travelling at warp speed and consuming everything in its path.

'This is hard for you? It is hard for you?' His fists were clenched. He wanted to hit or to stride away but he was paralysed by his uncertainty of where he was. His voice had risen into a sharp and rasping cry of anger. 'I have been told I will never see again. My career in ruins. My life derailed. Everything you take for granted ripped away. And this is hard for you?'

He did walk then, striding away, finding earth that was clumped and uneven under his feet, knowing he was likely walking straight across a newly growing crop but not caring, just wanting to be alone, to be utterly without witness to this terrible display.

Jim had no problem catching up with him. He caught him from behind, twisting him around, shaking him. Spock's feet stumbled on the ridged earth and he fell, landing with his face against rich dirt. The scent that rose around him reminded him forcibly of the hydroponics bay on the ship, setting off a chain remembrance of the corridors, the labs, the bridge, of all that he had lost. He could feel slim wisps of leaves under his hands like sparse grass and he grasped at them, ripped at them in his anger, flinging a handful of leaves, dirt, and pebbles across the ground.

'Leave me,' he growled. 'Find yourself another Edith. Find yourself a perfect woman with perfect eyes. There is no need for you to chain yourself to this useless carcass.'

Jim was down next to him on the ground, half over him, his arm coming across Spock's back and holding him so tightly that it was hard to breathe. The human shook the Vulcan, turned him over, lay over him. His breath was hot and near Spock's face. His anger and shock and grief were palpable.

'I don't want Edith, dammit. I don't want a perfect woman. I want you, Spock. You.'

'I am never going to see again,' Spock retorted, 'and you treat me as if I were capable of nothing, as if I never will be capable.'

'No, Spock,' Jim crooned, his voice becoming quieter now, softer. A hand touched Spock's cheek, stroked dirt from his face. 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I know this is hardest on you. I know it's devastating. I shouldn't have said that it was hard for me.'

'It is hard for you,' Spock insisted, understanding the truth of that. It would be hard for him if Jim had suddenly been struck blind. He exhaled a long breath. His head was lying back on the dirt. He would have been looking up at the sky. He could feel the sun on his face, and yet there was nothing, no sliver of light entering his useless eyes. 'It is hard for you, and that is why it would be best for us to part. For you to go back to the ship. For me to – '

And there he faltered. There again he was against the stone wall, thinking, What can I do? Where can I go? It was as useless as his attempt to walk away from Jim a few minutes ago. Again and again he came up against his inabilities, and failed.

'No,' Jim said with vehemence. 'No, Spock, I won't go. I will – ' He drew in breath, swallowed. His weight shifted and he was no long lying half over Spock but beside him instead. 'I will try to do better, Spock. That's all I can promise. To do better.'

Spock closed his eyes, feeling the uneven ground surface underneath him, pressing along his spine and the backs of his legs. The ground was cold. He recalled the whole nightmare of the past month, the arrival at Deneva, Jim's dead brother, the sting and then terrible, terrible pain of the creature's attack. Surgery, unconsciousness, waking to agony. A week of pure agony under rigid control, and then – this. The light building to an unbearable point and then darkness settling which had never gone away. It felt like drowning. He felt as if he had been sucked under water by currents and there was no escape.

'I – ' he began, but he was not sure how to finish the sentence.

'What, Spock?' Jim asked after a moment of silence.

Spock almost reached out to his mind, but he stopped himself. He could not inflict that on Jim at this moment. There was too much in there that would distress him.

'I am not sure that I can do better,' he said after a long time.

'Wait, Spock,' Jim said softly, stroking his hand against the Vulcan's face again. 'Promise me that you will wait until you've started your training. No life decisions, no assumptions that you'll never be useful again. Just wait a while. Will you promise that? You can't possibly assess your feelings and your future at this point.'

'No,' Spock said quietly, closing his eyes. 'No, I know.'

'Logic is your friend, Spock. You know that. When have you ever started on a new course in life without having to learn as you did it? You didn't step onto the bridge of the Enterprise as the best first officer in the fleet, did you?'

'No,' Spock said, remembering the years of learning, training, mistakes and successes one after another. Jim was right, of course, but logic seemed very far away.

'Do you know that we're lying in the middle of one of mom's wheat fields?' Jim asked after a while.

'I suspected as much,' Spock nodded. 'I trust we have not done too much damage.'

'Not too much,' Jim assured him.

They were quiet again, and then Jim touched his lips to Spock's cheek and said, 'I'm sorry, Spock. I'm sorry for overreacting, over-protecting.'

Spock curled his fingers around Jim's and gave them a light squeeze. 'I am sorry for giving in to emotion and despair.'

He could tell that Jim didn't know what to say to that. They had spoken enough about emotion.

'Jim, would you take me home?' Spock asked.

Together they stood up and Jim spent some moments brushing dirt from their clothes and skin.

'Mom'll think we've be making love in her cornfield,' he said with half a laugh.

'If she has spoken to Peter I very much doubt she will believe that,' Spock countered.

'Well, maybe not. Now, do you want me to – '

'I do need you to help me,' Spock nodded, understanding Jim's hesitancy.

Together they walked out of the field, and Spock felt that perhaps a corner had been turned in their relationship. He had felt that something had broken, that they had both been floundering since his blinding, and that this crisis might precipitate them back to something more as it used to be between them.

((O))

Later that day Spock sat in the farmhouse in the quiet afternoon, eyes closed and head resting against the soft high back of his armchair. Peter had been taken by his brothers to the local fun park for some light relief, and Jim had promised to take the strain off his mother and make dinner that evening, a real dinner prepared from fresh ingredients. Since Spock did not believe he could help he chose to sit with Winona in the sitting room. Perhaps aware that he had little to occupy him she had put music on, and they sat largely without speaking. Spock recognised Brahms, and relaxed into the depths of the composition, recalling the finger presses of that particular piece as if he had a piano in front of him. It had been a long time since he had been fortunate enough to be somewhere with a piano, and suddenly he wondered if it would be possible to hire one while he and Jim were settled in San Francisco.

He began to drift into a comfortable vision of the day stretching ahead in the apartment that Jim had already arranged, long evenings together in peace and quiet with no company but their own. Life very rarely ran to schedule on a starship, and although he would not choose these circumstances it would be pleasant to be stationary and on a fixed schedule for a while.

'Life's hard for you and Jim at the moment, isn't it?' Winona asked, cutting into his thoughts.

Spock blinked and turned toward her voice. 'It it not the easiest time,' he nodded, unwilling to express exactly how difficult things were. After the resolution of their argument in the field he felt rather easier about his relationship, but he knew that there were sure to still be difficulties to come.

'It's cut Jim up very badly losing his big brother, you know. I think it's brought back memories of losing – When we lost George, Jim's father, it was very hard for him.'

'I imagine it must have been hard for the entire family,' Spock said, although he was unwilling to delve into what must be a very emotional subject for Jim's mother.

'Yes,' she said slowly. 'Yes, of course it was. I – I – maybe I can be glad that George didn't have to live through losing his eldest son, but – '

Spock thought that was poor compensation for what had happened, but said nothing.

She was silent for a spell and the music flowed through the room. Then she said, 'Spock, I don't know if I will ever be able to express my gratitude to you for what you went through to develop and test the cure for that terrible parasite infection. I lost Sam and Aurelan but I will thank God every day that I didn't lose Peter too.'

Spock lifted an eyebrow, curious and somewhat nettled that Mrs Kirk should credit a mythical deity for what was in fact the result of extremely hard work by actual living beings.

'God was not a factor in the cure, Mrs Kirk,' he said quite seriously. 'The captain, Dr McCoy, and I, along with a large proportion of the medical and science staff, spent a good many hours researching methods which might kill the parasite infection. Finally Jim was struck with the thought that perhaps light alone might be fatal to the parasite. So, you see, it was actually your son who saved your nephew's life.'

'Thank God is just an expression,' Winona said, and Spock thought she was smiling. 'I know I should be thanking science, and humans and Vulcans. But Jim didn't tell me that he realised it was light that you needed to use?'

'The captain is typically modest,' Spock commented. 'It took, perhaps, an unscientific mind to consider an option that had not previously been considered.'

'But it was you who went into that test cubicle,' she reminded him.

'Yes,' Spock said pensively. 'I had very little choice.'

He did not like to think of that moment of haste, in which his judgement had been so clouded that he had not been able to wait for the first test results. There were too many ifs surrounding what had happened for him to be able to recall it with any comfort. He folded his hands together in his lap, thinking instead about Jim, about how difficult this time truly must be for him. Even at the best of times, even when everything was well, Jim hated to be away from the ship. He had given up much to be here on Earth with Spock.

'You will take care of him, won't you, Spock?' Winona asked quietly.

Spock almost started, struck by the novelty of anyone in recent weeks crediting him with any responsibility. It was, perhaps, not the kind of responsibility to which he was used, but for Jim's mother to be entrusting the care of her son to him touched him profoundly.

'I will endeavour to do my utmost,' he promised gravely. He stood up. 'If you will excuse me, Mrs Kirk,' he said, nodding his head to her.

'Oh, of course,' she said.

Again Spock was gratified that she did not jump up and offer help. She stayed sitting as the classical music swelled through the room, and Spock discreetly held out one hand and found his way over to the door, noticing the sounds of the floorboards creaking under his feet, the scent changing as he moved from sitting room to hall, the echoes becoming a little stronger as he passed into a space with fewer soft furnishings. All of these things built up a picture, and he was learning to see that picture more clearly every day.

He went to the kitchen and stood in the doorway for a moment, listening. Jim was humming quietly to himself. He was not moving around but seemed stationary. The noises indicated that he was chopping something. Spock wondered if he were wearing an apron, perhaps something feminine belonging to his mother. He wondered how his hands would look, one curled over the knife, the other holding whatever he was cutting – a vegetable, he thought, by the crisp sound. He wondered if Jim's hair had lightened in response to time spent under a real sun, if he were wearing jeans or something more modern, if he had a shirt that was open at the neck showing a flash of chest, or one of those very slick tops that were so in fashion that came high up the neck and had no openings. The emotion that welled in him was not as sharp edged as frustration. It was more a soft and sad regret that these simple things were lost to him. The sight of Jim's knuckles. The back of his neck. The varied colours of his human hair.

He walked into the room with care and up to the sounds of humming and cutting, and gently slipped his arms around Jim's waist from behind, resting his head lightly on Jim's shoulder in the crook of his neck. He could feel Jim sensing his quiet sadness. The human laid the knife down then turned around and cupped a hand to his face and kissed him gently. Then he put his arms around the Vulcan and just held him in silence, imparting wordless support and comfort for a grief that was not mentioned and did not need to be.

'I love you, Spock,' he said.

'T'hy'la,' Spock responded, knowing that would say it all.

He moved his hands discreetly to feel what Jim was wearing. A hand on the hip told him the fabric was denim. The top felt like cotton, and was loose.

'Retro jeans and a button up shirt,' Jim said, understanding what Spock was doing. 'The jeans are quite a dark blue, the shirt is orange with fuchsia panels. Oh, and mom's white apron over the top. My shirt sleeves are rolled up. I'm not wearing shoes or socks.'

'Thank you, Jim,' Spock said. He had a vision of Jim's bare feet in his mind that he found endearing. He would have to take care not to stand on his toes in his booted feet. 'What are you cutting?'

'Carrots at the moment. I've been putting off doing the onions. They get in my eyes so badly.'

Spock's mouth twitched in a nascent smile. 'Let me do the onions,' he said. 'They do not affect me.'

The hesitation was infinitesimal. 'Thank you, Spock,' Jim said. He moved sideways, gently nudging the Vulcan forward. 'The board is here,' he said, putting Spock's hand to it. 'Here's the knife and the onions. Two should be enough. The peels can – You know what, Spock, just put the peel aside and I'll throw it away. The chopped onion needs to go in this pan here,' he said, taking Spock's hand again and touching his fingers to the cold of metal just behind the chopping board. 'I've got some garlic that needs peeling and chopping too.'

Spock nodded, picking up the first onion and feeling its round, heavy form, and the papery skin that covered the flesh beneath. Perhaps Jim would worry about him cutting himself, but Spock did not. He was quite aware of where his hands were and the dimensions of the onion, and he carefully felt the blade of the knife to familiarise himself with its shape.

For a moment Jim stood close to him as Spock sliced the ends off the onions and began to peel off the skin. Spock did not feel that he was under scrutiny, just that Jim was close and loving and standing there because he liked to be near him, just as they did so often on the bridge when Spock did not need to be at his sensors or Jim did not need to be in the captain's chair.

Jim came a little closer and laid his hands over Spock's from behind, kissing the back of his neck. 'Thank you, Spock,' he said, making him pause for a moment in his chopping. 'You know, it's nice being at home for a while, but I can't wait until we're settled in San Francisco, together and alone. We've never had that. You can never really feel alone on the Enterprise. It's like having an extended family of four hundred thirty around you.'

'You are quite right,' Spock replied. He gently eased his hands out from under Jim's and continued chopping, not wanting to be distracted, but Jim was right. San Francisco would spell out a new chapter for both him and Jim, and he had to believe that it would be a positive one.