Title: Things that Never Happened I: Blue

Author: Nemo the Everbeing

oOo oOo oOo

Chapter 3: Who Caught and Sang the Sun in Flight

Morning underground is not heralded by the rising of the sun, but the call of the imam. The Muslim religious leaders of all the communities possess chronometers, a rare commodity, and the small devices shrill them awake at six every morning.

The imam walks the streets, chanting his convocation in mellifluous Arabic. The faithful arise and go to their communal hut for prayer. Everyone else simply awakens and rises for a new day. Children, so few since the purges, sleep through the chanting. No one has the heart to wake them.

The imam passes their hut and Len awakens. He didn't dream of blue last night. Instead he'd seen Pavel and Scotty lying dead in the rubble of San Fransisco. He saw Chris sprawled on a dirt plain stained red, a message from the front still clutched in her hand when they'd chased the fliers away. He'd seen Jim screaming at them to "Go! Go! Go!" as the Pacifists closed in around him, guns raised. He'd seen Spock's face harden and his mouth close as he'd dragged Len away from the melee, away from the danger. It was the last time they saw Jim. It was the last time Spock had spoken. It was the last time Len even considered alcohol as medication for the pain.

Now he just lives with it.

Spock is awake, and he watches as Len collects himself. It takes Len a while to stop shaking, but there are no tears so he considers it a good night's sleep. Spock, too, seems to have slept well. The dark green circles under his eyes have more or less faded, and his shoulders don't stoop quite as much this morning as they did last night.

Their faces are close. Every part of them is close. Len feels Spock's ghostly presence in his mind like fingers barely brushing. They watch one another, not speaking. Spock's is blinking, each flicker of movement possessing its own internal rhythm.

For that moment, they are both present. Both firmly rooted in that time and that place. Len focuses on Spock's face, trying to capture every gesture, every feature. Trying to solidify them. Make them real and permanent and perfect. Make them last.

The face seems to blur around the edges, fleeting and squirming away, refusing capture. Len watches harder, not blinking. The face needs to stop for just a second. Just a second is all he needs to understand, to know. After that, anything can happen. Spock and he can die, but Len will have that face in his mind. It will be his. He lays a hand on the face, trying to still it. Spock doesn't back away.

There it is. That face right there. Len gets his moment, crystallizing the face in his mind's eye. Keeping it perfectly: every hue, every shadow, every highlight. They lie on the blankets and watch and understand. This is new. This is different. They don't do this.

There is a long moment of indecision. Choices made in the dark seldom appear the same in the light. Even if there is no real light underground, the same principle applies. They've come this far, now it's a question of going further. Of shattering something delicate which, once broken, will never be repaired. It's a question of consequences, of what comes after the shattering. Will they find that the broken window leads to something infinitely more vital and real and good than what they have, or once the window is gone, will there be nothing left? Do they dare take the chance?

For an instant, they have courage. For an instant, they have conviction. For an instant, they are the men they once were, and Commander Spock's hand is curled around Doctor McCoy's neck, and Doctor McCoy's fingers run across Commander Spock's cheek. They can't look one another in the eyes. They're marveling at the work of their own hands, as if the appendages were on a disconnect, no longer a part of their bodies.

The instant is gone, and Len stands up too quickly. Spock watches him for a second and nods, rising too and going for his clothes. They dress. The clothes are mostly dry. Though the rinsing has removed the caked mud, their shirts are brown and always will be. Yet, the rinsing has cleaned off the insignias, and they shine with only a slightly dulled fervor. It makes Len glad to see.

Their clothes seem much thinner now. The cold will be a greater issue. The clothes feel more or less clean, though, and that makes them luxurious. Len finger-combs his hair until it feels right and he looks at the polished metal surface of a pan propped up as a mirror.

Nothing about the man in the mirror is right. He wonders who this man is. He's faded and thin, cheeks hollow, eyes sunken. His hair is longer than regulation, and the attempt to comb it has failed. The eyes are the worst. The eyes are gray. Len knows that they were once blue. No more. Even from something which seemed indelible, blue is gone. It's abandoned him. Len turns from the mirror, not wanting to see the man with the gray eyes.

Spock watches Len as he always does. Len looks at him, meeting his gaze, daring him to say something or flash something that in any way derides Len for his cowardice. Spock is equally guilty of that, anyway. It isn't as if either of them are alone in anything.

Spock hesistates, which is rare. He steps close to Len and raises his hands, which is rarer. Then, fingers there but not really, he brushes at Len's hair. Straightening. Ordering. Structuring. Chasing something elusive. Something blue.

Len wants to touch but doesn't dare. A movement, a moment will shatter this. Make him empty. He needs this moment as much as Spock does. It isn't often that they think about the past, but when they do they crave. When everything is lost, nothing matters. The numbness is ironically painful in a way that a person cannot imagine until they experience it. When they stop, the numbness will catch them. When they stop, everything they've experienced will be real.

Len is shaking. It's too much. It's bearing him down to a place he's never been, a place that terrifies him, a place that's hungry. He gasps, and the sound is loud in the silent hut. The imam has long since passed by and there is nothing in the world but the two of them.

Spock's mouth opens. It forms the beginning of a word, but can't get farther. Can't say anything for the pain. They fall together, crash and break and reform somewhere in the middle in a tight, despairing embrace. Something here. Something real. Something necessary.

Len's face is buried in Spock's shoulder. This is real. This is genuine. They're both gasping, but they gasp in time. They breathe in together, breathe out. In. Out. Real. Everything is so sharp. Everything is clear. So little time left before they go to die.

This is a soldier's embrace. A taut moment between men who face the inevitable, who stare out into the void and do not know what will come after. If anything. Len reaches out to the darkness and tries to part the veil between the worlds, but he can't. He can't reach far enough in, if there is a far enough. What would it be to close his eyes, he wonders, and never know anything else? For everything he has been, all his thoughts, knowledge, his blue to simply cease to be. Forever. What would it be for consciousness to not persist, but simply stop? No Len.

Spock's fingers are tight in his hair. It's the best Spock can give him. Len's face brushes the curve of Spock's neck. It's enough. It's more than he had expected.

Spock steps back. His eyes are hard and his shoulders set. Len nods. It's time to go. They walk out of the hut, passing others emerging from their own tiny dwellings. They will live these last days. If nothing else, they will live.

They go to Nyota's hut. She and Hikaru are waiting. Hikaru has also washed and now stands at attention. When Spock and he walk into the hut, Hikaru even salutes them. Len's not sure if it's for his benefit or for theirs. They are all of them walking dead.

Hikaru has his pack on. The smells from it tell tales of Nyota cooking long into the night. It's her way of saying goodbye. She never uses words anymore. She thinks they're useless, same as everything else you can't hold in your hands. There are dreams, sure, but they don't keep you alive, they only keep you going. That's a secondary goal. Ny's a tactician. Doesn't believe in the intangible. Len's never told her about blue and doesn't think he ever will. Nyota would disapprove.

"So soon?" Len asks Hikaru.

"They need soldiers at the front, Doc," Hikaru says. "No reinforcements unless the Vulcans come."

Flash. A twisting sort of doubt.

Hikaru watches them and says, "Mister Spock doesn't think that's going to happen."

Len closes his eyes. "He thinks they'll defend their own borders and secure a victory, rather than risk loss by helping us. Logic."

"I have to say, Sir," Hikaru says, "I really hate logic sometimes."

"I know what you mean, Kid," Len says.

Spock says nothing, of course. He looks at Len and cocks his head. Flash.

Len smiles. "Spock agrees."

Hikaru's eyes widen. "He does?"

Spock doesn't look at either of them.

"Of course he does," Len says. He doesn't need to say more. Hikaru understands. There are times a man can believe in something with everything he is, have it swallow him whole, reform him in its image, and he'll hate that thing all the more. You don't need to explain that to the walking dead.

Hikaru looks at the floor. He looks at the walls. He looks everywhere but at Len and Spock. There are words, they know, but Hikaru doesn't seem to want to say them. If he says goodbye now, it might be the last time.

"Son," Len says, wanting to take the decision off his shoulders. The kid has enough on his plate to worry about.

Hikaru shakes his head, hair fluttering in dark eyes. "Sirs," he says, saluting.

They return the gesture.

Hikaru turns and walks out of the hut. Another one gone to the front. If Hikaru gets lucky, he'll just lose the other arm and live out his days underground. "Too damn many gone, Spock," he says.

The barest nod, but Len sees the pain bone-deep in his mind's eye. The Vulcan is stupid for even trying to hide it. That sort of suppression will only make the next catharsis more painful. Spock should know that. Should know that he's not the only one betrayed.

"Let's go find some breakfast," Len says. They don't have to pay for it now. They're walking dead. Walking dead don't have to pay for food. A little thank-you to those about to die for the cause. The resistance isn't about to let anyone commit suicide on an empty stomach.

The morning smells of the underground are heady and thick: cooking meat and cinnamon, the yeasty smell of fresh bread and the acrid stink of the smithee burning government property into useful every-day items.

Spock and Len walk close together. There is something necessary in their nearness when they stand on the precipice. People watch them with reverence and sorrow. This is the passing of an age. The last Vulcan is going off to die. There won't be any more in this shrunken universe. They will be truly myth, nothing but a cultural memory waiting to be spun into a grandiose, glittering web of elaboration. Lies breathed through silver.

It's a thought that makes Len's chest hurt, and he focuses on the smell of food. There are kebabs roasting. The vendor knows them on sight and offers one. Len takes it, but Spock declines. Spock retrieves some bread. Len looks at him but doesn't ask. It's Spock's business if he wants to start refusing meat again. The walking dead are entitled to that sort of thing.

They walk and they eat, and Len watches. For the first time in years, since the alcohol dulled his interest in the world, Len forces himself to watch. To feel the world moving about him, eddying. Ragged people pass, some looking their way, some not, some recognizing them for what they are, some only seeing two more desperate men. One or two salute, but none are from the sciences. They're in red and gold, which makes Len sad, but it's still good to see uniforms.

There is something deep, Len realizes, about these people. Something running strong: they are free. It's a tiny thing, insignificant really. Freedom doesn't feed you, freedom doesn't cure the cases of trenchfoot that crop up when the underground is saturated with rain from above. Freedom, like dreams, like blue, keeps you going, though. Without food, and on two bad feet, freedom is a crutch.

These people are free. Their faces are hardened by the scars of their choice, but they chose regardless. Even among the walking dead, there is more life than in those who live on the surface. Those people's lives are true death. A lingering wait for the end, too far gone to realize what they've lost.

Len looks at Spock and wonders if freedom is worth the price. He wonders which is worse: the deadly life of the damned lurking in the darkness underground, or the living death of those in pristine splendor on the surface. Those who forgot . . .

Len shudders. No. Freedom is better. Anything is better than the loss. Anything is better than forgetting everything that ever meant something: Jim, the Enterprise, his career, his darling Joanna, Ny, Hikaru, Scotty and Pavel, Chris, Riley, Spock. God, his death is more than acceptable if it means he'll never lose the memory of Spock.

Len stops in the middle of the path, and Spock stops a few short paces away, turning and watching him, questioning with his eyes. Len doesn't look up from where he stands staring at his boots. He runs over what he thought. Of all the people he fears losing most, Spock tops his list. Why? Is it because Joanna is safe on Alpha Centauri? Is it because everyone else is gone or might as well be? No. None of those answers seem right. They're too easy, a snap of fingers with no substance, no heart.

In Len's tiny universe, only two things exist: blue and Spock, and those two things are inextricably bound in Len's mind. Each carries its own import, but each evokes a different feeling in Len. Blue is a lifeline, a necessity. Painful joy.

Spock is different. Spock is real and solid and there. Spock is the only one left who hasn't gone away or changed into someone unrecognizable. These things Len knew even before the collapse. What he never realized, what he never admitted until now, is that Spock means more to him than anyone but Jo. Even before it was necessary, some part of Len had spoken to some part of Spock. They are two halves of the same whole, and only the end of the world can force them into acknowledgement of that fact.

Well, the world has ended, and Len loves Spock. Len is in love with Spock.

It seems so trivial here, so trifling. It's a tiny thing, an unimportant speck in the grand scheme, but it matters to Len, more than freedom and dreams and life. Maybe even more than blue. This love was what he tried to puzzle out all last night and maybe even since he met his Vulcan. Everything that matters at all comes into inexplicable, extraordinary focus as he stands in a busy underground street holding a kebab and waiting to die. Life is sometimes strange.

He looks up and Spock is watching him, but does not probe his mind. Spock accepts his privacy and does not demand access. He doesn't ask why Len has stopped, and that's something for which Len is grateful. He's not sure if he could ever explain this to Spock. To tell him now, with such scant time left, would be more than cruel. Whether or not Spock accepts and reciprocates, the remaining days of their lives would be more painful for the truth.

Len keeps his mouth shut and keeps walking. They spend the morning in the town, walking, eating and looking at everything the vendors have for sale. There are no bigots this morning. Just people who glance their way. A few who salute. A few who look at them in pity and offer them food and wares to ease their passing. The food they will accept. The wares they refuse. They cannot take such things with them.

At last, they are forced to do what they've been subconsciously avoiding all morning. They return to Nyota's shack to find her at her table with a tall, angular man. They have maps spread out in front of them, and talk in low voices. Len can't hear what they're saying.

Flash. Spock can hear. They are planning Spock and Len's attack route, discussing chances for survival. Len doesn't want to know and Spock doesn't tell him. Spock's mind is so grim, he doesn't need to tell.

Nyota looks up. "I thought we were going to have to send a search party out for the two of you," she says, smiling. They can't return her smile and it withers on her face. She returns to business, looking pained. "We've got uniforms for you. Your weapons and explosives will come tomorrow, and you'll move out as soon as you've got them. Time is of the essence, and the longer we wait, the more chance they have of discovering our plans."

Spock and Len nod. They'd expected nothing else.

"Know that you're doing the resistance a great favor, Gentlemen," she says. "We won't forget this."

Len hates the necessary bullshit of that statement, but it has to be made for propriety's sake. Even in the underground, there is etiquette to be followed and procedure to maintain. Nyota knows it and Len knows it and Spock certainly knows it. Makes Spock just as sick as it makes Len. The Vulcan dislikes such a waste of words.

They stand at attention and when she nods to them, they turn to leave. "Visit the barber tonight," she says on their way out. "You'll need a shave and a haircut if you want to look like surface soldiers."

Len nods for both of them.