A/N: Title from the lyrics to "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" from Les Mis

Good words. That's where ideas come from.

Admiral Kirk remembered the words David -his son- had said to him after-after

After. There were only words for so much, and some things that could never be put into them.

It didn't stop humanity from trying, though. As Kirk walked the halls of Starfleet Headquarters, fending off well-meaning expressions of sympathy, it seemed as though every metaphor for grief that humanity had ever come up with had crossed Kirk's mind.

Oceans of grief. Waves of pain. Emptiness that felt fathoms deep. It wasn't just because he was looking out over San Francisco Bay that the ones that best described the feeling were all related to water. The grief was always there, filling him until it felt as deep as the ocean, revealing new facets everytime Kirk remembered something he and Spock would never do again. Only to become waves, crashing over him from the already deep wells whenever something reminded him anew. The sight of a chess board. The empty science station on the bridge during the trip home. The holo photo at his bedside, taken the day Spock had been promoted to captain.

It wasn't, Kirk thought, as if he was unaccustomed to grief. He was all too used to it. He'd lost, at times, what felt like nearly everyone he'd ever really cared about. Gary, Edith, Sam, Miramanee. He knew what it felt like, how it stayed all-encompassing for weeks, how he never wanted it to start to feel normal, as if that would be a betrayal of his loved ones. And yet, inexorably, normalcy always resumed, first with guilt then with resignation, finally with a wistfulness that the dead were not there to share it. It was a cruel pattern, but one that passed only by working through it. That was what he had done as captain, when he couldn't simply stop being captain to allow himself time to process. It had worked all those times before, until he regained his usual equilibrium.

It wasn't working now. Perhaps it was because the desk job at Starfleet Headquarters would never be as all-encompassing as the captain's chair. It left him too much time to sit home and think and remember and feel the gaping emptiness that it seemed as if nothing could fill. But more because Kirk knew, deep within him, that this was different. He felt as if his entire world had been knocked off its axis, never to be righted again. McCoy would say he was fighting it, refusing to believe that a world without Spock in it would ever return to normal.

But Kirk knew that it wouldn't. This loss was one he simply could not live with. He could live with losing someone. He knew what that felt like; understood that it would pass. This was different. He didn't feel as if he'd only lost someone important to him (Gary, Sam, Edith, Miramanee) - he felt as if he'd lost a part of himself. He walked around Starfleet feeling exposed and empty and adrift, as if he'd constantly forgotten something so important, so essential, that it was inconceivable that it wasn't there.

He remembered when Sam had died, how he felt as if he'd shatter if anyone mentioned it, if anyone tried to bring him back from the mission to mention his grief. Even Spock...now, Kirk felt as if he'd already been shattered, and someone had pieced him back together, but had forgotten half the pieces. There was no mission now and he couldn't have disappeared into one if there was. Not while he was so lost. He must have looked like it too, because more than one admiral had taken him aside already and asked if he was alright, if he needed to take some time. Kirk never knew what to say to them. Lash out at the suggestion that he should take a sabbatical when he never had, not even after the loss of his brother? Quietly agree with muted understanding that they'd all lost someone out there? The feeling that they thought he was weak lingered, somewhere underneath the all-encompassing loss. Should he cringe under the sympathetic looks, knowing that everyone thought it odd he should be so broken after the loss of a subordinate? Or take the leave they offered and wallow alone in his grief? No, not that. If he did that, he would never stop. He would stay alone in his grief forever, a recluse who would never return to Starfleet and then what would he have left? Eventually, the expressions of sympathy were joined by sidelong looks, as other captains said they'd lost a First Officer, or a Science Officer, or a friend they'd come up the ranks with, and they knew what it was like. With the unspoken agreement that it wasn't like this. That Kirk, the famous Admiral James T. Kirk, hero of two five-year missions, had been utterly broken by the loss of his former First Officer. That maybe he wasn't what he'd always been cracked up to be. Not without Captain Spock.

Without paying much attention to where he was going, Kirk found himself in the Starfleet Archives. Perhaps he'd been subconsciously looking for solitude, which he had at least found. No one ever went into the archives except for research, and those few people would leave him alone.

He sat in a quiet corner and sighed, closing his eyes. If they thought he was broken, Kirk thought, they were right. That was exactly how he felt now, as if he'd been broken in two. Not figuratively. Literally. There was a place in his mind and his soul that was empty, the edges harsh and torn and he felt as if he was constantly at the edge of a cliff, about to fall as he searched for what he was missing. If only he could sleep, where he might dream that he finally fell. But all he ever saw in his dreams anymore was the radiation-filled Engineering compartment, those last few moments where he felt whole, knowing this time what was coming. He always woke up feeling newly broken again. He didn't know which was more exhausting, the unhealed wound or the constant reopening of it.

No one had ever said it would hurt like this. But somehow, he'd always known. He'd always shied away from any chance they could be separated, had once thrown his own career to the winds because Spock might die if he didn't. And those three years they had been separated had been, until now, the hardest in his life. He'd always, somehow, known that this was past what he could stand.

"Admiral Kirk?" A quiet, even voice brought him out of his reverie. Kirk looked up, realized he was swallowing hard against the lump in his throat and quickly straightened his uniform. He couldn't be seen like this. Especially, he thought, as he noticed the pointed ears on the owner of the voice, by a Vulcan.

"Forgive me. I was looking for a quiet spot, but I'll go. I don't want to disturb anyone," he said roughly.

"Admiral," the Vulcan woman, tall and stately despite being about fifteen years younger than Kirk. "I grieve with thee."

Somehow, the even expression of Vulcan grief hit Kirk harder than any of the offers of sympathy from his human colleagues, and he coughed as he felt his voice break. "I - thank you."

"Captain Spock was much admired," the archivist said. "I myself joined Starfleet as a result of his success. His path made it a logical one."

Kirk had known many Vulcans who said likewise, had recruited many of them into Starfleet himself, though not this one. "How do you do it?" he asked quietly. "Spock always said, it's about not letting your emotions rule you. He even said," and here he chuckled bitterly, "that I had good emotional control, for a human. But this…"

The archivist sat down next to him. "You and Captain Spock, you were t'hy'la, were you not?"

Kirk stared at her in amazement. Even Spock had never said it aloud, only in a meld. "Yes," he whispered.

If a Vulcan could be said to smile, the archivist did then. "It has long been rumored that you and Captain Spock were more than simply friends. It would not be...logical, otherwise, for him to remain at your side instead of accepting his own command."

"It was, logical, then?" Kirk asked. He'd known, of course but to hear someone else say it, to know that someone else knew he wasn't losing his mind, was the only glimmer of light he'd seen in days.

"For t'hy'la, much that would not be logical otherwise becomes so. It is understood as the equal of a marriage bond, yet distinct in form."

"Spock…felt that," Kirk said. "I didn't...understand, fully. Until now." Until now, when he'd lost what he valued most and needed most, without ever really understanding it.

The Vulcan archivist looked slightly disapproving. "No human has ever entered into such a relationship with a Vulcan. You can be forgiven for not understanding. And without our emotional controls, it is understandable you would have difficulty dealing with a loss of this magnitude."

"It feels like I'm missing part of my mind. My soul," Kirk said.

"Because you are, Admiral Kirk," the archivist said. "In simplest forms, what you say is true. I am truly sorry you are left to mourn alone."

"Thank you," Kirk said, as the archivist stood to leave. He didn't feel peaceful, or better at all, really, but alongside the grief was the distinct feeling of relief. Someone understood. Someone knew what it was like, and he wasn't weak or unstable at all.

He was simply alone, dealing with something no human had ever been meant to handle.