Once again, another dead evening in the Recreation Room.

Kirk resigned himself to a corner, the corner farthest away from the stereo that was set on some acoustic guitar medley. He ate his dinner in silence, reading an old mystery novel that Spock had recommended to him once, several Stardates ago.

Spock. Kirk didn't want to think about him, much less talk. He had visited the Sickbay right after the end of his shift, and hadn't at all liked what he'd seen. Spock was asleep, under not one, but two blankets, struggling to stay warm despite a fever. His breathing was steady, but shallow. And he had no color to his face - the familiar green tint to his skin was gone, replaced by a pallor that left him a ghastly white. A human shade of white.

Kirk slammed his book shut and buried his face in his hands. That was the problem. It was the Vulcan part of Spock that kept the ship running - his thoroughness, his thoughtfulness, his insight. That was what separated him from everyone else, what made him stand out most from every other officer Kirk had ever worked with. And that was what was keeping him in Sickbay, and what was keeping Kirk from doing anything to help.

"Tired, Captain?" He looked up to see Uhura, holding a stack of paper in her hands. "Looks like you've hardly eaten."

"I...ate earlier, Lieutenant." It was a lie, and a bad one. "I'm not hungry."

"Why don't you come over and sit with Sulu and I?" she offered. "He's offered to teach me about origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding."

"Sure." Kirk stood and put what was left of his meatloaf - which, admittedly, was most of it - back in the Replicator for recycling. Though folding paper didn't sound particularly interesting, it was something to take his mind off everything else going on. He figured he might as well try it, seeing as there was nothing else for him to do - for Spock, or otherwise.

The Captain joined his Lieutenants at their table. Sulu had between his fingers a brightly colored piece of paper, patterned with intricate weavings of jade green and gold. Good ol' Sulu, always with a taste for bright colors - it was no wonder he was so fond of plants. Kirk took a breath and tried to regain his usual sense of self. "So, you're into paper folding now, eh, Sulu?"

"Oh, Captain, this isn't a new hobby. I learned this from my grandfather when I was very young." Sulu slid a pile of similar little papers over to Kirk. "Take one, and I'll show you."

"Alright." Kirk took a sheet - this one was orange, with little white flowers. "Lead the way."

Sulu gladly took a hold of the impromptu arts and crafts seminar. A multi-talented man, Kirk mused. Though "fantastic chess player" wouldn't be found on his list of skills, Sulu was a physicist, a botanist, a fencer, a pilot - and apparently a skilled origami artist, too. With patience and skill, he guided the Captain through folding triangles and squares, folding his paper in half and in half again, vertical and horizontal, until the piece of paper that had been in front of him became a handy little box.

"See? Pretty interesting, huh?" Sulu nudged Kirk with his elbow. "A three-dimensional box, from a two-dimensional piece of paper."

"Certainly not something I've seen before, Lieutenant." Kirk didn't want to admit his disinterest; Sulu took pride in his hobbies, and Kirk admired that about him. But his lackluster thought pattern made it difficult to take up much enthusiasm.

"Why don't you show that to Mr. Spock?" Kirk and Sulu both whirled around to a familiar voice: the new Ensign, from the Bridge. "I bet he'd like to know how to change the dimensions of a piece of paper."

"That's my First Officer you're talking about, Ensign," Kirk barked. It came out harsher than he'd intended. "And that's plenty."

"Captain," Uhura whispered. Her eyes were wide with alarm; she knew better than anyone how rare it was for Kirk to raise his voice.

"Sorry." Kirk shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. "Sulu, hand me another paper. Let me try one of your box things again."

"Have fun." The Ensign was clearly undisturbed by Kirk's brief outburst, his attitude completely unaltered.

Kirk tried to concentrate on the paper folds. Horizontal, vertical, diagonal...or was it the other way? Diagonal - he couldn't get the corners of his papers to meet quite in the middle. They overlapped. There was a little dot of white space. Never mind it, he would start over. He folded his paper in half, then in half again. Then he saw it, the shape of the paper.

A card.

They were an ancient relic on Earth: folded pieces of paper sent to people you were thinking about. Birthdays, anniversaries, deaths in the family, illness - in the 20th and 21st centuries, all had warranted a card. Sent in the mail, hand-delivered, it hadn't mattered. What mattered was the words of encouragement, written out and sent to someone far away.

"Sulu, do you have any thicker paper over there?" Kirk asked.

"Not with me, sir, but the Replicator'll make you some."

"Great." Kirk's voice had actually perked up - even he noticed it. He hurried to the Replicator and typed in instructions for a piece of thick paper and a box of colored pens - once, a source of entertainment for children, now for no other than captain of a starship. The requested items materialized soon after.

"What'cha doing with those, Captain?" Sulu inquired, as Kirk sat down. Uhura, too, interrupted her box-making to examine what Kirk was holding in his hands.

"Never mind what I'm doing; you two carry on," Kirk replied.

He sat down and immediately set to work. If he remembered right, from what he'd seen in old movies, cards were folded in half, on the short edge of the paper. The colored markers were for writing in a cheery note: "Get Well Soon" or "Happy Birthday," for instance. His paper folded, Kirk took up a pen - boy, had it been a long time since he'd taken up an actual pen, not just a stylus - and began to write.

Get

Well

Soon

Spo

He stopped. No, this wouldn't do. This was in English. Spock's first language was Vulcan. If the point was to make him more comfortable, the card should be written in Vulcan. Kirk didn't know how to write in Vulcan - he barely knew how to speak it. Vulcan...Uhura could write it, couldn't she? No, that was Klingon she knew… Vulcan…

"Dammit, do they even have paper on Vulcan?" Kirk stood with a jolt, jostling the table and sending his paper box flying. "What is the point of all this? I try to help, try to do anything, and nothing I do works!"

"Captain, what are you talking about?" Uhura stood and reached to put a hand on Kirk's shoulder. "What's going on?"

"Spock, Uhura!" Kirk cried. "He's stuck in Sickbay while we're in here making paper boxes and there's nothing I can do about it!"

"Captain…" Uhura picked up the piece of paper Kirk had been writing on. The card. "It looks like you were trying to make him a card."

"I was, and then I realized it was stupid!" Finally, everything that Kirk had felt for the past few days bubbled over, leaving the entire Recreation Room staring at him in horror. "It won't mean anything to him! It's an Earth thing! An American thing! There's no point!"

"Of course there is…"

"No, Lieutenant, there isn't! There's no point in trying to help, no point in sending food, or flowers, or a dinky little piece of paper!" Kirk grabbed his card from Uhura's hands, tearing it at the crease. "He's Vulcan! They don't have these things, they don't do these things on Vulcan!"

"He's half-Vulcan, Captain," Uhura corrected. She grabbed Kirk's hands right before he ripped his card once again. "He may not fully understand, but he's human enough to know it's the thought that counts."