There will be a chapter after this.

The anticipation in the bridge hummed through the silent air. A bead of sweat slowly dripped from Sulu's forehead and plopped unnoticed onto the control board.

The hideous planet, which churned stomachs into nauseous shreds, was only 500 Earth miles before them. It loomed chillingly in the view screen.

Hahv had briefly come to the bridge, saying to Kirk that it had hidden itself and their Vulcan friend. It and it's three companions were to disappear in the air as if they'd never existed, until the right moment came. Listening, but with his mind in a million different places, Kirk nodded as Hahv left the room. The captain wasn't sure if it'd quite literally disappeared, or if it had simply slipped his vision.

Either way, Kirk found himself with the entirety of his bridge crew, the Enterprise on yellow alert, and a loud, empty chair at the science station.

"Don't hold back your fear," Kirk breathed to his crew as he eyed the dreary looking planet. "Somehow, this species can sense our emotions. This one time, I'll need you to let your purest instincts take over control. Keep your heads on straight, but let the fear and tension be palpable. Don't give them any reason for suspicion. Got it?"

They nodded their heads. Kirk felt his pumping heart begin to seep through his bandages. A flash of deja vu flickered across his mind — had it only been such a short amount of time since he'd seen that alien ship on the horizon? The hologram of promised malice to come?

He ran his fingers over the sparkling pebbles in his pocket. He had to remind himself that he is still supposed to know nothing about this species; anything he learned from and about Hahv must be forgotten as he participates in this inevitable exchange.

He makes a glance over to Uhura, their eyes meeting. He nods his head, and she engages the recording system. One of Hahv's companions is ensuring it's concealment.

He inhales deeply. The last battle in this never ending war — after this, they can leave this ungodly place. They'll continue as they were, their lives intact and their minds wary, but awake. They will, finally, rest.

The were closing in on the previous location in which the alien had made itself apparent.

Inhale. Exhale. Focus.

The last time Kirk had been with the Cruel one, the one which almost killed his greatest friend, it had appeared on his bridge unnoticed. The captain's back had been turned as it found itself unwelcome on the ship.

This time, however, Kirk's eyes are directly on it's slowly compositing form. A seeded anger plants in Kirk's chest, thin fear breaking the shell in breaching roots. It's appearance pulls together from the air, it's body tall, shoulders hunched. A darkness lies in it's bottomless eyes.

"You have them."

It was not a question. It's voice crackled, filling the room with greed and intense hunger. Kirk needed to choose his words carefully.

"Yes."

"I felt you leave your course, James Kirk."

"Yes."

"Your Vulcan shipmate?"

Kirk swallowed, his eyes unwavering. His nostrils flared and he felt a small lump rise in his throat at the words he needed to say.

"He's dead."

The captain's statement was filled with such emotion, Chekov had to remind himself that it was a lie.

"I warned you, James Kirk, not to. I warned you not to attempt to escape. I warned you that I would know, that I have that power. I warned you of what I am capable of. You deceived me, and your friend is dead for it."

It's lies were laid thickly over the bridge.

"Yes." Kirk allowed a small, genuine break in his voice.

Not an ounce of remorse was visible on it's jagged face. Darkness radiated off it like a heat lamp. Kirk idly wondered why it's holographic frame lacked it's past shortages, when it had been so obvious before.

It suddenly cocked it's head, as if it heard a small noise no one else could hear.

"How can you find yourself so upset, James? Was he truly so significant to you?"

He couldn't physically feel it, but Kirk knew the alien was reading his emotions. It's tone was coated in entitlement, belittling the captain for his care over his first officer's 'death'.

A small flame of anger flared in the depths of Kirk's gut. When is Hahv supposed to take this over?

It stretched a dark, impending hand towards Kirk.

"Give them to me."

Kirk held still, his racing heart ironic against his statued feet. He tried to think of what Spock had gone through, the anguish and the relentless torture, to let his grief snuff out the fury. The night leaked from the alien's aura as it's hand held for too long.

"He was nothing, James Kirk," it growled, impatience lining it's words, mistaking Kirk's hesitation for Hahv as regret for Spock. "Nothing compared to what you've got hiding in your pockets. He was weak. He was imbalanced. At war with himself over two halves of unwhole species, doubling the impurity which pulsed through his now stilled veins. I've done you a favor, Captain, and you must repay me in what is rolling between your fingertips."

Kirk's growing flame sparked as he clenched his fist around the Nevadian crystals. Where is Hahv? What is taking so long? It had promised to intervene as soon as this one demanded the crystals. Is this a conspiracy against his ship, against the Federation? Has he been tricked into joining these two teams together, ensuring his own ship's demise along with his entire crew? As the word liar circulated around a mental image of Hahv, Kirk's intuition ashed out his doubts.

No. He knew Hahv was not a liar. He knew it to be a friend.

Something was amiss.

Impatience won over the dark being standing at the head of the bridge, and it lunged towards Kirk with a vicious hunt. Kirk staggered backwards as it came upon him, positive this was his end, but it halted in it's tracks as swiftly as it had moved. For a moment, Kirk believed Hahv to have finally taken control, but he soon found himself to be wrong.

It cocked it's head again as it bore it's eyes through the walls beyond Kirk. Agonizing seconds ticked by as the entire room was silent, the alien towering over Kirk in remarkable stillness. Then, slowly, intensely, it's eyes migrated from the walls to look directly into Kirk's soul. His blood went cold, the alien only feet in front of him, it's eyes sending icicles into the captain's lungs. Kirk didn't remember feeling so devoid of warmth during their first encounter. It was this moment that the captain realized that this was not a hologram.

"You lied to me." It's voice was low, unsteady, threatening. Depths of hellfire reeked from the expression that towed in it's realization. Kirk's arm was leaning against the captain's chair, frozen from when he caught himself from stumbling when it lunged. The color from his face drained as they each, unblinkingly, came to grasp what the other was not saying.

It knew.

It immediately reached for Kirk's pocket, it's moonless fingers curling menacingly towards the crystals, but Kirk leapt backwards over the chair, holding the back of it as a partition between he and it. Having this baneful alien looming over him, insatiable hunger crackling in it's eyes and it's movements, leaking venin and murder from it's pores, Kirk found only one thing running through his mind:

Don't let it have them.

Kirk instinctively palmed the outside of his pocket, expecting to feel the rocky pressure from the crystals nesting within. His knuckles turned white as he realized he felt nothing but the fabric of his pants.

A wave of terror ran through his body. He looked down and shoved his hand into his pocket, sure there must be a mistake, but his hunting fingers answer in affirmation. He jerked his head back up to the offense, afraid to see it twirling the rocks between it's assassinating fingers, but it's furious expression told Kirk that something else took the Nvandian's from his possession. Hahv.

In a change of mind, it stalked around the chair, it's feet poisoning the tiles as it passed Kirk's bewildered face and headed towards the back of the bridge. Without thinking, the fear in where it was going taking over his actions, Kirk put himself between it and wherever it wished to go. It swiped it's hand through the air, and the oxygen in Kirk's lungs left him as he was thrown across the room, his body colliding painfully with the engineering console. Several officers stood from their chairs, shouting his name in alarm. It stood in front of the turbo lift, it's shoulders adjusting in study as it looked at, or perhaps past, the walls.

Kirk's brain pounded against his head, hardly registering the warm liquid running down his temple. Sulu and Scotty lifted him to unstable feet, but Kirk could only think of how that alien had made a point not to kill him, how it could have killed him, how it should have killed him, how it wants to wait to kill him, how it's going to kill him first. Kirk can see it in the alien's shoulders, in it's poised stance — it's mapping the ship into it's mind, locating the thing, the person, the target, the lie that Kirk told it, that it's now hunting for.

Before he knows what he's saying, before he strategies what he should say, what he should do, he reaches out towards it, crying out "WAIT!" before it turns to look at him, a gleam in it's black eyes, and it ebbs away into the air.

Kirk is paralyzed for only half a second before he sprints from his friends' grip to his chair, pounding his fist against the communication control.

"SICKBAY! BONES, COME IN!"

No one answers, and Kirk bounds for the turbolift, despite knowing there is nothing he can do. Knowing that the time it will take for him to sprint to medical will mean nothing in the eyes of what this thing can do, what it may have already done, what it will do even if Kirk could reach his friends before it. Panic rises in his throat. He pries open his communicator as he slams into the wall of the lift.

"McCoy, answer me now! Bones!"

In sickbay, the chief medical officer can hear his communicator chirping aggressively in his pocket, but the adrenaline coursing through him mutes it's contents. Spock is sitting stiffly against the headboard, his knees half raised and his arms braced on the mattress in alarm. He finds himself alarmed, yes, but calm, his emotions controlled, logic and stoicism in the place of fear.

Despite his control, vivid flashes of traumatic pain enter his mind at the sight of this thing that caused him to be so dead while barely alive. But then, as the figure sitting beside him stands, it's replaced by dread. Dread at the sight of the back of McCoy's head, standing between him and this nefarious being of shadow. Chapel lingers, hers hands shaking, ten feet to the left. Looking at this dark creature, she forgets what joy feels like.

"Tell me how he is alive, or I will kill you in three seconds." It knows there is only one way this blacklisted Vulcan can still be alive, but the numbness in it's disbelief demands to hear the words.

"Fuck you." spits McCoy.

"Tell me."

In something that seems like a memory or a dream, it reaches it's hand out towards Spock. Oxygen leaves his lungs, and he stiffens as a new pain flows through his flesh. In a horrible realization, Spock feels it to be different than the pain it had brought before; his blood curdles and an immense pressure fills his veins.

Before Hahv's healing touch, there were jolting blue lighting bolts that decorated his poisoned collarbone, feeding down his shoulder and encasing his ribcage. There was no longer any trace of them. But now, a deep shade of purple sprouted from above his heart, and identical violet lines shot out from underneath his sleeves and neckline. Bolts of purple cobwebs stretch up his greying skin, running down his arms, climbing up his neck, moving entirely more rapidly than their former blue counterparts. The Vulcan saw whiteness, and he sat paralyzed as his body was infiltrated once more by this being's heinous power.

McCoy reached behind him and grasped the pole which the biobed monitor lied upon, and he violently swung it into the alien's head, cracking into it as if it were the ball and he were the batter. The pole snapped into several pieces, clattering to the floor. The alien staggered and it's hand faltered, unsuspecting of the assault. Spock's body releases, the purple lines disappearing immediately into his skin, and he gasps for air. He shifts over to meet Chapel's gesturing arms. She tugs him out from the bed and helps him stagger to his feet as McCoy throws any object he can find, hurling it at the abominable.

Once it shakes the surprise, clearly otherwise unaffected, the alien stops an incoming object midair and reverses its trajectory, nicking McCoy's neck before it slams into the back wall. Hellbent on it's target, infuriated at it's initial failure at succession, humiliated at the foolery tried upon it, the alien shoots a hand through the air and slices it to the left to catch an unseen beam on Chapel. She's launched away from the Vulcan. She cries out as she's catapulted into a table, sending vials, papers, and glass shattering to the floor. Spock collapses, unsupported, onto the floor. He curses his weak muscles as he glances at her, fruitlessly wishing her to have been safe in her quarters.

Immediately, outrage lines his veins as he looks to the alien. Static shock fills the room as they meet eyes, victim and offender, casualty and criminal, prey and predator, the enraged and the vengeful. Spock can see the intent of death in it's soulless gaze.

"Notice anything strange about your patient, doctor?" It deplores towards McCoy. The doctor, holding a red stained hand to his neck, pulls himself up from the floor.

"What the hell are you talking about?" he clamors angrily.

"Clearly, he's alive when he shouldn't be. Somehow, you fools extracted that venom from him, but his blood is far from clean."

McCoy takes a slow step back and to the left, his mind on survival, trying as he can to be inconspicuous. It's words peak little interest in McCoy. Not when he knows his phaser is sitting atop the desk.

"It is clean."

"It's not. Didn't you see what I did to him?" It hisses through it's charcoal teeth, raising it's hand again to demonstrate it's statement.

McCoy fingers the wood behind his back until he finds a hold on the phaser. With the alien's gaze on the older man, Spock braces his palm on the wall beside him, trying shakily to lift himself to his feet. He wants to signal McCoy stop, to tell him no, you will get yourself killed, this will not work, McCoy, you illogical human being what are you thinking? But he knows any noise he makes will give the doctor away.

McCoy, knowing his options are dwindled to nothing, swings the phaser around, his finger on the trigger, and shoots a deathly red beam towards the alien.

But it knew. It had known the moment McCoy had taken those few steps backwards, but in cruel entertainment, waited until the human thought he had the upper hand when he never did.

Spock's shouts were drowned by the sound of the beam reverberating against the black alien palm, a deafening boom thundering through the air as eradication found McCoy squarely in the chest and he dropped like a dead weight to the floor. His endeavors evaporated into the air as if they never existed.

Leaning against the wall, Spock stared at McCoy's stilled body with wide eyes. He suffocated his rising emotions, allowing his control and logic to forefront his mind as he looked back to the alien.

"How are you alive?" It whispered with venom. Spock's chest heaved in both pain and surfacing fury.

"I believe you already know the answer to your question."

It suddenly strode towards him like a predator, it's head low, it's anger fuming out from it's body like a spigot. It shot it's hand up, and where Spock expected a fresh wave of pain, instead it continued hunting towards him until it physically grasped his throat and threw him against the wall. It's flesh felt like lava. Though his neck was scorching with it's poisonous touch, he reached up his hands to futilely pry it away, only succeeding in the additional corrosion of his palms. He felt his breath escape him and colors spotted his vision, splotching over the still bodies of the doctor and nurse who so diligently tried to keep him alive.

In the corner of his failing vision, a bright light filled the doorway and the intense pain pulsing down his body significantly subsided. He heard strange, desperate noises, and he thought it must be his lungs gasping for the air that wouldn't come. A loud buzzing filled his ears. He wondered if this is what dying sounded like.

"Let him go, K—."

"What are you doing on this ship, S—?" It sneered back, it's voice echoing off the walls of S.'s mind.

"Let him go."

"No."

Hahv shot his hand through the air with impeccable agility, immediately throwing K. off the colorless Vulcan, it's black body bouncing off the wall to mirror what it itself had done to the humans.

"You were given a chance, K—. You were given another life, a life which you did not deserve. You could have remade yourself, remade the mindless followers who you lead to this depth of ruthless, a-cultured corruption."

Hahv lifted K. through the air and it's brightness circled to stand in front of Spock, K. rotating above them. It swiftly brought it's hand back down, K. crashing to the ground, causing the entire room, the entire deck, to quake with the impact.

"How can you have strayed so far from our way? To kill so needlessly, so effortlessly, as if you enjoy it?"

"Because I do enjoy it." croaked K. from the floor, angry passion laced in his words.

Kirk saw Medical only a few feet in front of him, but he was knocked to his knees by a violent jolt of the deck. Kirk barreled back up to his feet and rammed his shoulder into the jammed door, his body slamming into the wood. He knocked the door away, but halted in his tracks at the sight before him.

Spock was sputtering on the floor, kneeling between his biobed and the wall, with Hahv standing between he and the one who meant to hill him. Chapel was tossed aside, an overturned table beside her, half conscious, limply pushing a book away from her prone body. McCoy lie completely still on the ground, eyes closed, blood pouring down from his neck. He was unmoving.

"I was wrong to banish you here." Hahv's strong, commanding voice dwarfed over K. "You're done with chances."

"S—, listen to me; look at what we can do. Look at what you can do. How can you dorm yourself on a ship like this, a ship of the blooded, of the mortal? We —"

"Do not mistake yourself for immortal, K—."

"I have a colony down there, S—…you can kill me all you want, but I know you can't have many on this ship. I—"

"Your people are already dead."

S.'s statement lingered in the connection between them, leaving K. finally silent. K. could hear the truth in S.'s words. The gravity of it's demise fell upon the link.

"They were few hundred less than what I left." continued Hahv, an accusation in his mental voice. "Where are the rest?"

"I killed them," admitted K. openly, proudly. "after the humans left for the Nvandians. I killed them, so I could harvest their power to take the crystals from that damn Captain's dead clutches."

"Our entire species is built upon life, K—. Life. Living. Existence. To end another species' is a part of that philosophy, but your own people? The people who gave up their lives to follow you down this path? How can you have that within you?"

"How can you not? You're the weak one, S—, not me. Don't you stand there, above me, as if you yourself are in the purity. As if you're better than me."

"I am not pure, K—. I have made mistakes. My largest, of which, is allowing you to live, banished, on this planet, after what you had done on our home planet. I will live with that regret forever.

L—, Z—, and M— have amended this mistake on the planet below us, and I will rectify that mistake now."

"You won't kill me. Them, the ones down there, sure…it must have been easy to kill them. They don't know you like I do. They haven't known you your entire existence. They —"

Hahv clenched it's jaw and clenched it's fist in a kind of pained choreography, and the being called K. in front of it crumbled to a pile of black ash that disintegrated into nothingness.

Kirk was at McCoy's side, his fingers wrapped around the doctor's wrist, as he watched the dance before him silently unfold. It was clear Hahv had the upper hand, but suddenly, surprisingly, the dark beast on the floor turned to emptiness.

It was gone.

"Hahv." Kirk broke the silence. Spock had been on his hands and knees, a pained hand to his blackened throat, as he curiously watched this bright creature stand there to wordlessly defend him.

Hahv heard Kirk's call, but it turned around to face the downed Vulcan. It lowered itself to meet eye level with Spock. It said nothing, but Spock could read the ringing, absolute apology in it's eyes.

It reached out towards Spock, who found himself to be surprised at his lack of a flinch, and it gently touched an illuminated finger to his throat. Immediately, the charred skin from K.'s grasp receded back to the green-tinted tone it was before, the pain gone with it. It rotated it's hand to do the same with Spock's palms. It moved under Spock's elbow and effortlessly lifted him to his feet. Spock momentarily felt as though all his ailments were dusted away at the contact.

"Doctor McCoy?" Spock directed to Kirk, a deep dismay in his voice. He planted his gaze at the disturbingly still man. Kirk half smiled, a small amount of blood from his wound gathering in the corner of his mouth.

"He's alive, Spock."

The Vulcan couldn't help himself at his reaction; he'd been certain the phaser, guaranteed to kill any man, any Federation species, had ended the doctor. He let out an audible sigh of relief, the alleviation taking his shaky legs. He'd barely swayed an inch backwards before Hahv put a hand behind his back, it's touch sending a strange flourish of life through Spock. It's effects of contact was in high contrast to it's fallen brethren. Hahv brought him to kneel next to Kirk, and glided over to Chapel, lifting her (amidst her wondrous expression at it's proximity) to her feet.

"How is he alive?" asked Spock. "It was a phaser, Jim…"

Kirk narrowed his eyes at the information and twisted around, searching for the weapon in question. He found it near McCoy's feet and brought it to his eyes. He let a small puff of air out through his nose, disdainfully laughing at the audacity of the universe.

"It was set to stun."

Spock slowly closed his eyes, allowing himself a moment to feel. He opened them again, eyeing the calamity of strewn debris, the nurse who dusted off her blood spotted dress, the lights flickering in angry objection, the stream of red running down Jim's face, the alive but stilled body of a man who was willing to die for Spock's own life, the pulsing pain that seemed to never subside in every inch of the Vulcan's body…

This could never be what he predicted to find when he signed himself to Starfleet. This was never what ran through his mind at his mother's proud tears as she fondly waved him goodbye, this was never what he convinced himself to be more promising than the never ending, disappointing gleam in his father's eyes, this was never what he found so appealing to be when he studied the twinkling, curious stars on the red planet of Vulcan…

But the defender in this, the being who was alone clear of blood and dirt in the room, who alone stood durable and strong, who's entire existence proved a mystery to science and everything Spock had known, who's very natural essence leaked light and life, who once more kneeled in front of Spock, who could sense the unwelcome emotions that pulsed through the Vulcan, who placed it's jarringly bright touch upon the Vulcan's shoulder —

Well…it, perhaps, was.