Chapter 18 - Departure

Amanda brushed Kirk's arm with her hand, the closest he expected she would get to a hug. She led him in with a welcoming gesture. "Come in, James. Sarek will join us shortly when he is free."

"I'm going to miss this kind of graciousness," Kirk said with his most charming smile.

The early afternoon light glared in the windows of the tea room. Amanda considered him with bright eyes, hands folded delicately before her. "It's too bad Spock couldn't join us."

Kirk gave her a weak nod.

"Or did you chose this time intentionally?" she asked.

"I didn't resist this time when it was suggested." Kirk felt something here was unfinished. And suspected he would not figure out what it was with Spock present.

"While I'm gone, you'll prod Spock to keep you informed of how he's doing?" Kirk asked.

"If you mean his emotional state, it is not the Vulcan way."

Kirk looked away. He'd expected an 'of course.' "Spock might need it."

"Nevertheless."

"Spock's going to be gone for a time, too, after this term."

She nodded, gaze inward. Every expression an approximation of a Vulcan one.

"At least I won't be the only one missing him," Kirk said.

After a long silence, she said, "You are going to a difficult place, James. Intentionally."

"I have to prove something. If that's what you are leading up to."

"To yourself?"

"Mostly." He smiled weakly. "I also hope to convince Starfleet to give me a full two bars."

The ajar door swung open. Sarek considered Kirk before stepping in. Kirk's face warmed under the scrutiny.

"You are departing earth very soon, I am told."

"Yes, Ambassador. I wanted to personally say goodbye."

"Will you require anything of us here while you are there on this mission?"

"I appreciate your offering. But not that I can think of right now."

Sarek relaxed his clasped hands. He and Amanda now stood in the same pose. "The offer will remain open."

Kirk's lips wanted to vibrate. He pinched them between his teeth. "Thank you."

Kirk fought a sense of exposure, vulnerability. Unsuccessfully. Sarek knew too much of what was inside him, and that was battling against his need to take on a command posture.

Ever the diplomat, Sarek filled in the silence. "You have researched this place you are going."

"Extensively. You accuse me of relying on luck, but I prefer to think of it as estimating what unexpected plan has the best chance based on knowing as much as possible before getting into trouble."

Kirk frowned inwardly. He was trying too hard.

Sarek nodded. "As illogical as your decisions appear from the outside, I do hope you have success with them and return safely."

"Thanks. I do as well."

Kirk looked between them, unwilling to depart. He hung there, longing to express something he had not yet identified. Both of them appeared unreachable.

Sarek tilted his head to the side, looked to Amanda. "Perhaps we should call for tea."

Kirk flushed with self annoyance and took the offered seat. He looked at his place setting to settle his thoughts. They spoke of something minor and unrelated while they waited for the servants to return.

They were willing to make him a son in law. Kirk need not feel unduly catered to. They wanted to help, but propriety help them at a distance, led to these broad gestures and silences.

The tea warmed Kirk's cup and he cradled it despite the warm room. The heat spread through his bones. His heart slowed.

"Are you concerned about the risks of your assignment?" Amanda asked.

"A little. The normal amount. More if I dwell on it. But I need a challenge before boredom gets me. To be honest. And if I want to move up, I need to learn to command larger groups."

The cake tray arrived. Kirk looked it over. He was the only one of the three to do so.

Kirk said to Sarek, "The reports indicate things are a little messy there. As maybe you're aware."

"I reviewed the intel file for the sector."

Kirk selected an apricot tart and put it on his plate. He wanted to say something about the act of leaving, not something about where he was going. He wanted these uncertain emotions to have something to do with Spock, but they did not.

Sarek turned to Amanda and they shared a silent look. Sarek steepled his rough first and middle fingers before himself.

"I sense, James, that you are holding back on expressing something. Do you wish for one of us to depart to make it easier?"

Kirk's face heated again. He was far too vulnerable. Perhaps that was the issue.

"I don't know what to say." Kirk dropped the small square of sponge cake he'd been pinching. "If I knew I'd just say it. I have one last chance here for a long time. But I don't know what needs saying." He looked between them. "I appreciate your presence in my life." He stopped, hemmed in by their need for restraint. "Maybe that's what I need to say."

He wiped his fingers, watched the steam sinuously emerging from his teacup. "I'm maybe trying to talk to a ghost. I'm not used to worrying that anyone will be worried about me."

Kirk looked up finally into their calm, attentive expressions.

"I don't know how to do this." Kirk felt better saying this.

"We will be concerned about you," Amanda said.

"If I may," Sarek said. "You seem to lack a departing ritual to mark this transition."

Kirk looked up sharply. "Yes. I do. Maybe there is one and I just don't know it."

Silence again. Sarek said, "If we have done something that has led to this emotional disturbance in you, I regret it. You undoubtedly need to be clear of mind to remain safe."

Kirk considered him, considered how his worst memories now contained a sustaining presence. A father, Loomis would probably say, although Kirk would dispute that. There was no parallel. Kirk felt his gut tightening. He was narrowing down the source of his issue.

"I don't presume to be your son-in-law, even though you offered." Kirk held up a hand when Amanda started to speak. "Please. I don't want anyone worrying about me. It's much easier. On the other hand, I feel like I'm lacking a blessing for what I'm doing. And there is no one to give it."

Sarek put his index fingers to his lips in a familiar gesture. "I cannot sanction violence."

"I actually didn't mean the mission itself." Kirk looked out the window, across to the windows on the other side of the light well. "I don't know what I mean. I am trying to talk to a ghost." He laid his napkin beside his plate. "I appreciate your patience with me."

"That is easy to offer," Amanda said.

Kirk delayed standing, wondered what his father would think of what he was doing. Any of it. He was so far away from the boy he was when he last knew him.

"I feel like I've regressed in a way." Kirk risked gauging their reaction to this.

"You are relying on us," Amanda said. "And you prefer not to. This is very Vulcan."

Kirk's lips relaxed. "I don't know how to live otherwise. But it's not the way things are, and I have to be honest and admit that." Kirk felt again like he'd chipped away at what was straining inside him.

Sarek nodded solemnly.

Kirk stood up, and Sarek followed suit.

"Don't worry too much about me. All right?" Kirk said with a bit of levity.

"Only the amount logically called for."


Spock sat in Kirk's dorm room the night before Kirk's early morning departure. He bent over his devices, absorbed in the analysis and modeling of the test run data from the Apollo's impulse engines. Articles on baselining sensors were open on one padd before him and on the desk monitor, and the data and models were open on a second and third padd. He was having trouble creating a whole methodolgy out of the sparse knowledge he'd acquired over the course of the week. The relevant papers assumed he was already knowledgeable about the underlying math and while he could learn it, eventually, there was insufficient time. For once, Spock was glad he didn't have more data.

Kirk lay on his front, bare to the waist, arms under his pillow. His breathing indicated he was not sleeping although he had been in the same position for over two hours.

"How's it going?" Kirk asked, voice muffled. He lifted his head when Spock didn't answer.

Spock sighed. "I do not know."

"It's due before class today?"

"Yes."

Kirk stuffed the pillow better under his chin. "Do you know who you are writing for?"

Spock raised his head. "The instructor, I assume."

"What purpose does your report serve to her?"

"I do not know." Spock sat back, looked over his things. "That seems an oversight on my part."

"Come and show me."

By the indirect light of three padds and the monitor Spock settled in on the bunk beside Kirk. He held up his smaller assigned padd and scrolled through the draft report.

"Wait. Scroll back. You made a simulation?"

"I was having difficulty expressing in math terminology how the models of the engine's frame during warm field idle interacted with the ship's superstructure. Math is not my strongest field and I did not advance far enough to have learned how to discuss it at this level. And I have not even started the models of the straight-line field release run."

Kirk watched the colors and textures ripple over the 3D frame on the screen and bleed into the ghostly structure of the ship encasing it, sometimes where the components barely interacted physically.

"Spock, I think you should stick with providing simulations with annotations."

Spock took the padd back. "I must justify my choices with the model. There were hundreds of small decisions."

"Put them in a list, put bullets on the front of each one. If you have time, put them in some kind of order. The simulations are far better."

Spock stared at the screen. "I will trust you on that."

Spock worked at the padd while Kirk watched. It was almost oh one hundred.

Kirk's heart sped up, his gut twisted. "Can I pull you away from your work for an hour?"

Spock put the padd aside, rolled toward Kirk on the bed. "Yes."

Kirk snaked his arms around Spock, waited. Spock's lean body gradually relaxed against him, but Kirk's sense of Spock and the world remained the same, even after many minutes of just their breathing between them.

Kirk spoke into Spock's uniform. "I thought I'd feel that sense of calm I often do when we're this close."

Spock's hand came up and rested in the middle of Kirk's back. "Producing that state is a high priest level ability. Zienn wishes me to refrain from it until I am trained properly in its use."

"Oh." Kirk held fixed, worked hard not to feel cheated.

Spock's hold tightened. "James?"

In less than two hours, Kirk had to be at the transport area outside HQ. He closed his eyes, let his thoughts drift through Loomis's words, his own promises to himself.

"I feel terrible asking this of you." Kirk stroked Spock's back in an attempt to mitigate his words. "Please say no if that's what you need to say." He bit his lips, vacillated. "But I could really use a meld."

Spock rocked up on his elbow to look down at Kirk. "Why do you feel terrible asking this?"

"Because I shouldn't need it. Because I can't stand to hurt you, especially in that way."

"And you could only bring yourself to request this of me now?"

"I wasn't going to ask at all. But the machine on Tantalus. It made me feel so empty." Kirk swallowed hard, ran his hand down Spock's upper arm. "I'm hoping you can touch that. Ease it. Before I go."

Spock's dark eyes studied him. The padds had gone dark, but there was light from the monitor. "Would you withhold anything from me that I required, even if it made you uncomfortable to provide it?"

"No."

"Do I not get the same right to attend to you?"

Kirk lifted his head at the hardening of Spock's voice. "Yes. You do get that right. But that doesn't mean I have to be pleased to make you to sacrifice for me. Or willing to do so if I have an option."

Spock considered this, looked away as if to collect his emotions. After half a minute, he looked back.

"I will of course help you." Spock sat up, put one foot on the floor, laced his fingers together. "I need approximately four minutes to prepare."

Spock's bowed profile was outlined by the monitor's low light. Kirk's abdomen fluttered in anticipation and dread. Spock's hands were going to be on him, going to be opening him up as intimately as they ever were together.

Quiet minutes past. Spock reached out. Kirk took his hand as it approached his face, kissed the backs of his knuckles, held them against his lips.

Kirk closed his eyes. "I'm not going to willingly let you withdraw once you are in me." He gripped Spock's hand tighter, aware of his own breathing.

Spock bent and kissed the center of Kirk's chest, kissed lower, on his sternum. Kirk let go of the straining in himself, both positive and negative. Waited.

Spock rose up. His hand stroked under Kirk's ear, moved to his temple, pressed hard. Kirk closed his eyes, opened his mind. The taint of his guilt and the events on Tantalus rushed forward when he tried to hold them back. He had intended to just enjoy the feeling of joining and wanted nothing to interfere.

Spock paged awkwardly through the memories, hampered by Kirk's emotions and by his own lack of skill. Kirk sensed Spock's difficulty, became as lax as he could, as open and unemotional as possible. The events became bare, distant.

"I do not understand love," came Spock's slow voice above Kirk. "It is illogical for you to experience guilt on account of that."

"I don't much now," Kirk sleepily said. "At the time I felt terribly."

Spock's free hand drifted over Kirk's chest. Kirk sensed Spock following his reactions through the meld. They were entirely one for a moment, bound together by the thread of a comfortable, casual touch. And then connected in another way by Spock's spasm of ill ease at the psychic closeness. Kirk felt his need to move on, to finish and be alone again.

"Forgive," Spock said. "Zienn handles our melds. With too much ease to learn from him."

Kirk blindly reached for Spock's thigh, patted it. "The machine." Kirk spoke from deep within the meld. He wanted to speak more, to express the aching emptiness so it could be called forth and laid bare and be touched and the emptiness of it neutralized.

Kirk found his way through the memories, to the hopeless fight with the ever increasing volume of the machine. Spock accepted the rush of the struggle's memories and the pain. He was unwavering through the onslaught, and Kirk felt a flow of respect meet the meld, felt the reflection of it balm some of Spock's strain at maintaining the meld. Kirk felt an awkward embracing, cradling. An attempt at reassurance that he knew was half bravado from Spock, but he was so grateful for it, his own affection washed through the meld, blotting out everything else.

Spock wavered, tiring from his emotions. And he wasn't skilled enough. Kirk may have to take his pain with him, a notion which hobbled Spock all the more due to disappointment with himself. There was another awkward attempt at a mind embrace, but tainted by helplessness.

Kirk pushed his affection outward, let go of his own needs. The emptiness had given way, had lost it's hard edges. He tried to embrace in return within the space Spock outlined in their minds.

Their minds inverted around each other. Kirk caught his breath at the disjoint this caused in his perceptions. He felt Spock bring order to their thoughts with rigid methodical steps that drained him horribly. Then Kirk's mind was his own again, with Spock's presence on the periphery the same way his body hovered above him on the bed.

"I did something wrong," Kirk said. "You okay?"

"It was my fault," Spock said. "My clumsy effort at resisting a full joining of our thoughts."

The meld opened gently. They floated near each other, receiving strong impressions which created little feedback loops. Kirk could feel his hand on Spock's left thigh, on his own left thigh, which was in two places.

Spock raised his other hand. Put both on Kirk's face, pressed tighter. The memories of the neutralizer came forward again, the memories of the pain afterward.

"Reach out to me," Spock's hypnotic voice said. Within their minds, Spock was rigid, dogged.

Kirk sorrowed for what he was putting Spock through. He pushed that sympathy and guilt outward, felt it part and diverge around Spock's presence. Spock reached inward to the heart of Kirk in that instant.

There was Spock, filling him. On the border of reality, Kirk had fingers, arms, but his core had become a burning, living Other within him, augmenting him from the inside. He wanted nothing but for that to continue. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. He dare not move otherwise. And then Spock was on the periphery again.

"Is that better?" Spock's face was just above Kirk's.

Kirk took an inventory, lifted an arm. "Yeah."

"That was a narrow mind touch. The only kind I could tolerate as a teen. I have never initiated one, only been on the receiving end."

Spock was pulling away. Kirk grabbed for his hand, but it had already parted from his face. Kirk captured it and pressed Spock's knuckles to his chest with both hands.

"The Healer on the Hampton did this thing where she just made a window on my mind."

"I know the kind."

"I understood then why you don't like melds." He found Spock's gaze. "You okay?"

"No. I do not know how to help you."

"Spock, just your trying helped. Thank you for that." He memorized Spock's features, the sweep of his brows and ears, the way his eyelashes made his eyes look exotic. "You did help. It's not so painfully sharp now, the memory."

Kirk tilted his chin up to look at the clock upside down, reached up for Spock to pull him down on top of himself.

"Just enough time."


"Shall I accompany you to the transport center?"

Kirk pulled on his jacket. He knew what the scene would be there, lots of tears, the barely controlled grief of strangers. "I'd prefer to say goodbye here."

Spock nodded, sedate. "As you wish."

Kirk slipped his jacket encased arms around Spock, pulled tight for long seconds. Let go.

"I'll call you from the transport ship, okay? After your last class. Give Chanel hell, okay?"

Spock nodded, eyes brighter. Kirk stepped back, stepped up to him again, kissed him hard enough to hurt. He glanced back at the door, bowed his head with a painful frown, let the door slide closed between them.

The night felt as cold as Kirk feared it would. He took an aircar to the plaza around Starfleet HQ.

The transport center lit the night haze into an unearthly glow. Half the center was open to the outside and was only marginally warmer. Kirk got in line to check in. Ahead of him a pair of women were holding each other. Parents and children were waving, standing around glaze-eyed, in shock at the arrival of the day of departure.

Kirk looked away. He had spent the last ten years always moving toward something, never being drawn back. His gut didn't like this change. He checked in, with two minutes to spare, took the palm-sized tag the machine spit out that the techs used to sort out who was beaming where. He held it in his hand rather than hook it on his person.

It was going to get worse at the end of Spock's first Academy term. He wasn't going to be able to even talk to Spock while he was at the temple. Would be very limited from messaging him. And the Spock that would emerge from that full-time steeping in discipline… Kirk shivered, tightened his jacket.

"Red Papa," the transporter tech's assistant announced. Kirk's tag lightly pulsed in his hand. He stepped up onto the lit platform along with eight others. Beyond the glow, crew awaiting departure and shock-saddened civilians lined the circular wall. It was all light years away even before the scanning dissolution took hold.