Vulcan, Lake Sa'ahkh-vik

As soon as they could see again, the two of them saw a lake. A lake on Vulcan: it was like the snow on top of Mount Seleya.

A community spread itself along one bank while carvings of primitive Vulcans and animals stared out from the rock wall on the opposite side. The mountains and desert on the horizon lurked as if warning the water what had happened to its sister bodies.

Different species of water birds and reptiles sounded in morning harmony with the lapping waves, while a few mammals approached to drink. The smell of fresh water and its plant life changed the air; a ripple broke the surface and a splash followed it.

"That was a fish! A fish!" Nachson exclaimed, naturally astounded. They stood midway on a slope, looking down to the lake's edge. "I heard about this place. I always meant to come see it, but it's like it's not real."

Saavik's eyes went everywhere around the water that took so much for Vulcans to keep on the desert world, as well as the diverse community on its bank.

He turned back to her. "OK. You said a secret and a mistake."

"Yes, a critical miscalculation. Time is not linear. It loops and touches in points. The argument is even made that it is simultaneous. It is our perception that makes it separate. I am here seventeen minutes, Rhinar is captured, and I will not be standing next to you."

It felt like death. Her voracious survival instinct thrashed under the surface like a prisoner, demanding she battle for life as she always did. She hadn't expected it. She'd imagined she would see her younger self as herself, as interchangeable. If the younger lived, she lived.

But that was wrong. She had lived this day, she had fought its battles, she had found her friends and family. She had lived her younger self's life, but her younger self had not lived hers.

It separated them.

Meanwhile, where? She scanned the people on and around the water again.

Aloud, she continued, "At the same time, Spock, the children, Imre and the crew, will all disappear simultaneously with me. None of it will have happened."

Losing her, even though he kept the younger Saavik, sunk in. His voice roughened. "Got it."

"Except it's wrong. It is not so simple… or perhaps it is more simple. It is still eighty-five years. I traveled through it to you at warp speed."

Saavik found them. Three Vulcan adults moved through other people in the community and came this way.

"When time is repaired," she went on, her voice even like she hadn't seen them, "the simultaneous relationship is in effect. That is how I calculated my decisions. However, until time is repaired, the past and present remain in force."

The group walked up the slope towards her. One man and one woman wore Starfleet uniforms, different divisions.

Nachson's eyes grew round as he understood. "Captain, you're saying-" He realized she looked past him and followed her gaze.

"I am saying, it is not the seventeen minutes that matters at this moment. It is the eighty-five years."

The two women were undoubtedly identical twins, their black eyes defying type and reflecting the warmness of Vulcan itself. The one in a Starfleet uniform kept her dark hair short except for long bangs swept to the side; she carried a bag. Her sister's hair was long and elegantly styled, as dignified as her clothing and diplomatic signet. Their older brother wore a uniform too, Medical division. He had fulfilled his parents' prediction of having his grandfather's build with his grandmother's blue eyes and his father's features.

"Mother," he said gently, his eyes bright.

"Setik." Saavik stood, frozen, and then abruptly grabbed him and pulled him to her. She had scooped him out of a medical bed to do this same thing only an hour ago, as he begged to know why she hadn't been there for him.

She held one arm out to her daughters who rushed to her. She pressed her head to each of theirs and felt the mature mental touch of three children who had just been under ten years old a few moments ago.

Nachson exclaimed quietly under his breath, but they heard him. They broke away, the children hovering close to her. "I didn't mean to interrupt," Kyle apologized. "It's just – look at you." His eyes went around. "I missed you."

Instead of questioning whether he meant I missed you growing up or something else, Setik replied with a genuine, "As we did you."

"Yeah, about that." He grabbed hold of the other's shoulders. "Listen-"

Setik raised an eyebrow. "You blame yourself for my capture. I blamed myself for your death. Let us agree we are not at fault and Rhinar is."

Kyle gave a big grin. "Good man. Is it just you guys?"

Where is your father? Saavik's heart kept asking and her eyes continuously searched the lake shores for another figure to join them.

"Yes," T'Kel answered, both looking at her mother and keeping her gaze away, "although I married at one point. I… was very young and I made a mistake. It ended."

Saavik stared. "You were married?" And I wasn't there for it or to comfort you at the end.

T'Pren jumped in for her twin; some things stayed the same. "He never had the strength of character to appreciate her, Mother."

Setik's jaw line tightened. "He was not equal to her. He never was."

"Hold on." Nachson went to T'Kel. "This guy treated you bad?" And then like nothing had ever changed – and in this way, it hadn't, "You could've come to me. I'd have kept your secret."

"Yes, you would." She looked at him, the little girl seeing him as an adult. She said lightly, so he knew it was all right, "You were a little young too."

He didn't like it and Saavik understood. He set his teeth against each other. "I wish I could've been there, helped you somehow. Even if I just took that-" He spun to Setik. "You took care of this, right? This guy that hurt her?" He faced T'Pren. "You stood up for your sister?"

T'Pren's eyes crinkled. "Of course, we did. Uncle James went with us, Uncle Leonard and Hikaru, Uncle Pavel, Aunt Nyota. It was fascinating."

Uncle James?

"What's this guy's name?"

"Ante Ryan." T'Kel nearly smiled. "Are you going to track him down?"

His teeth flashed in answer until Setik's next words. "You are everything we remember."

Nachson's eyes went from him to T'Kel to T'Pren. "C'mon, I'm just the guy who did things like run you around and sneak your toys into the captain's office."

"As I suspected," Saavik returned.

T'Pren answered him. "Those things? They meant everything. You mean everything to us." Her whole expression was a smile. "You are our Fun Uncle. We're so pleased to finally talk to you again."

He ducked his head and cleared his throat.

They weren't little kids anymore. Except, they were. At this moment, they were also five and seven years old and in school.

But not these three. Saavik had allowed Nachson to go first for a reason; in fact, it was the reason she brought him. She decided she'd have to tell him straight out when he proved she didn't need to.

He came to her, the grin gone. "I'll buy you all the time I can." He moved a few steps away to beam out.

"Kyle," Saavik called. His eyes shone. "Do not die for me."

"I hear you." He brought up his communicator and then didn't flip it open. "Will I remember you?"

"Unknown," she said gently.

He went back to her in fast strides and took her head between his hands, then pressed his forehead to hers. It was a human sign of brotherhood and it was a Vulcan sign of that and much more. "Captain. My. Captain."

She told him what she had said over his body and then brought the words from his first quotation to linger in their minds. The one he had just asked her to remember:

I'm not the way they see me,

Not who they think I am.

I'm just a man.

And I have need of you, sweet woman.

Not for the velvet of your touch,

But for the weaponry of your mind.

There's a hole, it needs mending.

My own Achilles heel.

So I offer up my need.

Teach me, noble lady,

I will follow where you lead.

Now he was the one who kissed her hair and whispered, "You can say yes to this, Saavik. I'm good with it."

He stepped away leaving her puzzled. Setik called to him and as soon as Nachson turned, he knelt on one knee. Kyle knelt too and faded away in the transporter beam.

The hum still dimmed when everyone moved quickly. They had to seize however much Nachson got them and they had so much to say.

Saavik went first. "You have been here all this time? Where are Imre and the crew?"

T'Pren replied, "We did not settle here. It was tempting and having Grandfather and Grandmother so close had advantages. It was too dangerous, however, even with the new identities they created. Once Father and the others realized their perception of time was wrong, they decided the Federation and Starfleet had to know. It has been highly classified ever since, but we have a colony, far from the core worlds. We chose this as our rendezvous point with you long ago. Mother, did you notice the lake's name? It is your name in its pre-Reform origin - Sa'ahkh-vik - before the Romulans modified it."

When her name meant from the well-war, before it was Sa'Av Ik and its common form. She had noticed it when she was first assigned to Vulcan after Spock's fal tor pan. But today… today she memorized coordinates and paid no heed to where they went, only that her children –

– her grown children –

– waited here.

She tore her eyes from them for a brief second to view the lake. "You came here because of the name?"

"It gave us a connection to you," her daughter said. "That has never stopped being important."

Saavik held her hands out because her children's need – and her own – came through like they were oh so small still. A basic want came up through them, wanting Mother to step back up on that pedestal and put their worlds right.

Setik took one hand and she split her fingers on the other; not to salute but so each daughter could take half of her fingers each. Just like when they were little and used her as balance to walk.

So many things to ask. "I melded with the Spock here only moments ago. He did not have any memories of you."

"We had to suppress them," Setik explained. "It is another discovery we made."

T'Kel added. "He would not go to Gol otherwise."

"You had contact with everyone else though? You said Uncle James?"

T'Pren's mental touch shimmered. "He preferred Uncle Jim, so we used it as well. It started at adulthood when they all said they didn't want ranks or titles like Mister anymore."

Saavik took in her son and daughter's red uniform jackets. She asked T'Kel first and warmly remembered the scene in Sickbay. "I suppose I know who sponsored you."

"Yes. It's been interesting keeping out of your and Father's way."

Her mother slid the white shoulder braid between her fingers. "Command?"

"Uncle Jim insisted. He always hoped I'd go for the captain's chair myself."

T'Pren informed her proudly, "She has another jacket as well, Mother. For Engineering and the helm."

"Mother, this one… it is yours." T'Kel clarified. She looked at her with a spark in her eyes. "You did leave your cabin behind and this way, it matches your own." The spark grew when she eyed the green dress "Usually. I would be in violation," she stroked the insignia. "No one has a captain's rank at the colony. Imre refused it, he said it was yours. It is a tradition now. I was given permission for today." She scooped up the bag she dropped when Saavik held out her arms to them. She offered it to her mother. "In case you would prefer to match."

Saavik's fingers tightened on the braid and opened the bag. Her uniform. She pulled out the jacket, not using time for the rest. She kept a hold of T'Kel's eyes as she slipped it on.

Now she paused to ask Setik, placing her hand on his green braid. "Leonard McCoy?"

His posture got more lift. "For medical school and the Academy."

T'Pren expanded on her brother's life too. "Setik commands the colony's medical division, Mother, along with Ssaalz."

Saavik held the braid a little longer, imagining her son side by side with her namesake, so far from that junior position. She let it go, their minutes running out. "You avoided me, but you stayed in connection with the others?"

T'Pren said, "We did. They made this life… a life. And we mostly avoided you. Some moments were too tempting."

Saavik automatically gave them the look she did when they didn't behave. "When?"

Setik tried to be the voice of reason. "When we thought it would do no harm. For example, we could not be with the Symmetry team to Thieurrull obviously, we were only children, but we did go to your foster family right before the Academy. We told the couple we were an evaluation team and couldn't speak with you directly, only observe you. We went to Vulcan when you were attacked by the Romulan hybrids disease. We couldn't be with the medical group itself, but we were on the Orbital station. Grandmother brought us into your hospital room when you were unconscious during Phase I."

T'Kel said, "I pretended to monitor a class at the Academy so I could watch you and Father at lectures. Otherwise, Setik and I had to wait to be in the Academy class five years after you but also five years before Valeris." Her brow darkly furrowed. "She marked another time we could not act on what we knew."

T'Pren's voice sobered. "Another was being with Grandmother Amanda when she died. And we went to see Uncle Jim before he did. They both left you recorded messages if there's time."

She explained there was more, such as McCoy coming up with an explanation for their biology and sealing it under the Vulcan Privacy Act to get them safely in the Academy. Or the time Scotty snuck T'Kel on board the Enterprise when the younger Spock was meant to take leave at home, only to have him call Saavik for help when no one else believed him. Or how T'Pren came on board with Sarek and Amanda as a diplomatic aide. How the younger Spock was sent off on an errand so the three siblings and the older Spock could stand around Kirk and have what they all wanted since that first day: we are off to see the stars!

Except, their mother wasn't there.

Saavik tried to think of differences since Kirk, Amanda, and everyone else knew her life. Kirk's smile at the Kobayashi Maru… was it broader? Was Sarek's initial reluctance with her more of something he was told to do? Was Amanda's welcome not so much a first time but waiting for her to arrive? Were all their looks confused as well as mourning Spock's death?

For the most part, the children explained, they were assigned to the colony, especially Setik whose looks brought too many questions. With Kirk and Sarek behind him, his story of being a cousin gained solidity, but it still was easier for the twins than him.

Which was why T'Pren, in her diplomatic corps capacity, got trade ties with what was seen as lesser worlds in the Federation, but T'Kel realized were untapped sources for technological advancement. Even though they couldn't share or use any major discoveries outside the colony.

Saavik wondered how much longer could Nachson buy them. "Did no one try to fix time another way?"

T'Pren answered, "Father took a team to the Guardian once we realized we had to wait for today for you to return. But it wouldn't allow anyone through, not for this. You were in a unique situation. Not because you used a different means of time travel. We could go after you or you could come back through despite your journey starting in another way. It said you, to our senses, began your jump through time but had not landed, so to speak. Anyone attempting to go after you interfered with time further."

As with the first time and McCoy ran through the portal. If he had stayed within the portal, in that limbo, Kirk and Spock wouldn't be able to follow him. It was the fact he went through that allowed them to follow to the new timeline. Kirk, Spock, and anyone else on the Klingon Bird of Prey could have used the Guardian to return, as another example. Like the Guardian had said, Saavik appeared frozen in midleap to the people she left behind. They waited the eighty-five years for her foot to touch down.

She began plotting.

T'Pren's head went back. "Mother, you have not asked about Father."

Because Saavik did not want to hear the cold facts that her husband had died, and that was why her constant searching around the lake for him never found him. Why this was the first time the children said something directly about him to her.

"When-" did he die? No, she would not say it. "Where-"

"He is behind you waiting to be noticed."

She spun around quickly and her heart pounded in her side. He stood a few paces further up the slope and had gone completely gray with more lines to his face. His eyes… his eyes had not changed or the intelligence in them. So handsome, so distinguished. Hers. And here. She wanted to throw herself at him and her rushed steps nearly did so. "I was... no one spoke of you being here. I thought the bond I sensed was from your counterpart. Spock."

"You were wrong," he said in teasing. "The bond is with me. Your husband." His head cocked to the side. "Odd. To be jealous of one's self."

She knew; she felt it earlier. "I seem to be nothing but wrong today." She did something she rarely did; she hesitated. She had to ask, but the answer… her pounding heart squeezed. "The bond. Do I have a right to it? It has been... too many years for you. Has someone… replaced me?"

He put two fingers to her lips to quiet them. "No one ever could. You are my true mate and no one in any time can change that truth." He let his hand fall. "The age difference has grown significantly. Perhaps you-"

She gave back to him all the love showing in his gaze and the words he gave her. "You are my true mate and no number can change that truth. I only care that we have been... parted."

"My wife, we have little time."

Her eyes went from one child to another and thought of the lives they had built. Her hand shot to her communicator. "I must stop ourselves."

"Saavik-"

"Nachson will heed me." You can say yes to this, Saavik. I'm good with it. This was what he meant. He'd let her choose the family's continued existence over his own. In fact, he'd make it happen that Rhinar got away and the time travel took effect. She only had to ask.

Spock still reached to stop her. "Husband," she argued, "I cannot have our family destroyed. My last decision was in grievous error, I will not make this one."

"Mother," T'Kel said quietly. "Imre is dead."

No! Her head shot to the sky where his younger self stayed on their ship. She had intended to ask if he married the woman he wanted.

"We have told you the positive," T'Pren explained. "It is not all that way."

She had just asked this about Nachson only hours ago. "How?"

"He contracted Ubalos Syndrome."

Saavik stared at her. "A cure exists for it. Sickbay remained with him and it was fully stocked."

"It was," Setik agreed, the next to give bad news. "However, Ubalos Syndrome strikes entire populations. We did not have enough for everyone. In a case like that, Starfleet would signal a medical emergency and send other ships. With us, they could not."

The fact her son danced around came to her on its own. "The cure was discovered in the 24th Century. I abandoned you in the 23rd. Starfleet could not help and you could not allow them to have it ahead of its historical time."

"Mother, you did not abandon us. No one thinks that way. And we did synthesize the drug from the last of our original stores… but it took more time than we estimated. Commander Imre refused to take it while the civilians and the crew suffered. We didn't produce enough in time to save him."

What had she done? How many were gone?

"I will go back," she decided. "I will bring all of you forward with me instead of leaving you." Spock shook his head. How was she not convincing him? "Then I will go back to shortly after I left. I can use the Guardian. I will make Imre take that cure. I will be with you and the children. We will be together for all these years."

"You will never make it before time is returned."

"You underestimate Nachson."

"You underestimate ourselves." Spock's eyes never left her face. "I give your Kyle Nachson a great deal of respect. I didn't think we would have this much time. That is his doing. However, our younger selves will eventually step in and seize Rhinar lest he continues to threaten anyone. Especially the children."

"You want me to threaten the children! These children! How do I do that?"

A strong hand seized her wrist and pulled the communicator from her hand. T'Kel. "You need not make this decision, Mother. We are. For once, someone else will have the burden."

Setik. "We have known for eighty-five years that this day would most likely come. We will allow everyone to have the lives they are meant to live."

"And your lives?" she insisted. "With your grandmother and Jim Kirk and Montgomery Scott?"

"But without you. Our mother." T'Pren. "We will have lives still. Not with them, we are aware of it and feel it. Deeply. But this life is with you. As you know, Mother, they would make the same decision you did earlier: correct the wrong that has happened despite the personal cost." Her gaze found her father. "We have, however, one thing that is ours."

"My wife." Saavik's haunted eyes went back to her husband. "Our counterparts will have the next life together after this one. Their katras will be in the Hall of Thought and whatever they discover after it. A life together, no service, no duty taking us away. Together. Along with so many important others."

After Spock's fal tor pan, when Kirk said to them, "The next time better not be for a very long time, but if you want to respect what we just went through, make sure you get to Seleya when it's time. We want you to have that future. It's why we did everything, it's why… everything happened. It should tell you how much it means to us." And McCoy had vowed vengeance on "two certain Vulcans if they didn't listen to Jim making sense."

Her Spock now finished with a sad truth: "You and I do not have that, aduna. We can, however, have something else." He held out his hand to her. "We can be one in another way. No longer separate. More than touching and touched, more than never parted."

He said additional words through their bond and how his dark eyes looked into hers, waiting without judgment to see if she would do as he asked.

Her head turned to the children. They each nodded and because only the family was here, they each dropped their mental shields, the waves of it washing over her.

"Mother," T'Kel called. She reached for Amanda's necklace under her uniform and began putting it around Saavik's neck.

Saavik stopped her and went to place it again on T'Kel when she took her turn in stopping her mother. She went with her eyes to T'Pren. Saavik agreed by taking her oldest daughter's hand and pooling the chain and pendant into her palm.

T'Kel stood in front of her twin. "The one most like Grandmother should wear her necklace."

Saavik said goodbye to this life, her survivor's instinct quiet for the one person who could ask for this. She drew close to Spock, taking his hand, and he held her against him as their heads nestled together. At first, he held out two fingers and she touched them with hers; a gesture — a touch, a kiss — only a Vulcan and their T'hi Myi could truly appreciate.

My heart to your heart.

They moved their hands to each other's faces and melded. All walls, all barriers, brought down so the other could pour in. Experiences they had in other melds went through and new ones were embraced.

And then…

They crossed the line of individuals into merging together. They weren't Spock and Saavik any longer, but a unique being of one. It went beyond Kashkau wuhkuh eh teretuhr: 'our minds are joined together and as one'. It went beyond the profound significance and intimacy of pon farr with the heart's mate: a joining of the mind, spirit, and the body that forged and strengthened a link that could never truly be broken, binding two souls on a profound level. That type of pon farr, such as the ineffable bond between Saavik and Spock, was an intimacy much deeper than anything else.

And this went beyond all of that.

They could never be separated again.

They no longer felt their bodies or their surroundings. They knew only each other.

Spock/Saavik were one.