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As McCoy had predicted their journey was a rather complicated one. Spock had a quite severe flashback, followed by an even more severe panic attack on the shuttle from Archanis IV to Earth. Kirk should have known that they wouldn't be granted an easy journey. The people, the different thoughts and emotions, the vibrating deck of the small, crowded shuttle - which reminded Spock too much of the last minutes on his planet, where the whole landscape had slowly collapsed in itself - it was simply too much for the traumatized, hurt Vulcan.

McCoy and Kirk spend hours to calm their Vulcan down, failing miserably until McCoy saw no other option than to sedate Spock.

The flashbacks, mostly followed by panic attacks were what frightened Kirk the most. Spock's panic attacks were like an explosion. From the outsider's point of view the Vulcan looked like he was dying. It was all - cold sweat and convulsive tremors, wet choking breaths coming too quick and too shallow, and Spock looking at Kirk with widened eyes.

To see Spock like that, being so incredible frightened – it was like observing the death of a star, or more like observing a supernova. Because most stars died a peaceful death, gently shedding their outer gases into interstellar space. However one in a thousand – the star whose mass was greater than about eight times that of the sun – died in a violent, brutal, dazzling blast. A supernova - and Spock's panic attacks where exactly that – a violent, brutal event.

There was nothing calm; nothing peaceful about Spock's panic attacks. Spock's terror was so great, apparently, so overwhelming, that it left the Vulcan shaken up and breathing heavily for hours and it mostly ended with him passing out.

Kirk had spent the rest of the journey, with a sleeping Spock in his arms and a dark-head on his shoulder, developing a new dislike for transport shuttles. As they finally arrived at the shuttle port in San Francisco, they hired a private cab to McCoy's apartment and after another one-hour flight they were finally home – or at least at McCoy's home.

They were too short of adrenaline, too tired, too exhausted and in Spock's case too groggy and broken - still having to fight the after-effects of the tranquillizer - to unpack or even contact Boyce about their arrival. So they spend the rest of the day sleeping or in Kirk's case trying to sleep. McCoy in his own room and Kirk and Spock curled up to each other in the guest room – the captain watching the young Vulcan sleep – memorizing his face, feeling the leaden heart in his chest ache, thinking 'I love you' over and over again but never saying it out loud.

As Kirk woke up the next morning and Spock was not sleeping beside him – he panicked. He bolted upright in the bed the moment he registered the Vulcan's absence and shot from it – still dressed in the clothes he wore the day prior and in which he had fallen asleep in.

His first panicked check was the bathroom, which was across the guest room. However it stood empty and overly clean. The second one – was Bones room – which was empty too, the bed neatly made and only twenty seconds after waking up Kirk was running down the long corridor to the kitchen, bare feet bouncing off the wooden floorboards. He rudely flung the kitchen door open – his heart racing.

"Spock!"

"Jim, what the hell?" McCoy grunted, frying something on the stove, which probably hadn't been used in ages. Boyce and Spock were sitting at the table across the cooking area. Both starring at him. The later, had wrapped his long spidery fingers around a mug with steaming – Kirk assumed – tea and had changed into dark sweatpants hanging too loose around his thin frame and a long-sleeved grey shirt two sizes too large for him. He was also wrapped in a bathrobe. According to the ill fit the shirt and pants where probably Pike's. However the bathrobe Kirk recognized as his own. Warmth was spreading in his chest.

"Spock…you're.."

"James?"

Spock's expression shifted in that strange way it had of not actually changing, but somehow displaying something completely different to what it had before. Reading him was a skill that had taken Kirk months to develop – and most of the time he had still problems with it.

"Take a seat, Jim," Boyce said, before Kirk could say something. The older man's face was weathered with laugh lines when Kirk had met him for the first time at Barnett's annual Christmas party, but now deep furrows were etched across his forehead, around his nostrils and lips and eyes, spreading down in webs of failing skin - yet another person Pike's death brought nothing more than pain.

He stood up, leaving Kirk his own seat although there was plenty of space left on the relatively big breakfast table and joined McCoy in the cooking area, flicking on the coffee machine in passing.

"It's good to see you, sir."

Kirk sat down, while Boyce unceremoniously jammed bread into the toaster. The coffee machine gurgled instantly and Kirk let his gaze wander over the overly full kitchen table. The food they had prepared so far could feed an army.

"Coffee, toast?" We have plenty – since our little Vulcan here refuses to eat again."

"Phillip…"

"Aren't I right, little one…?"

The whole scene had something domestic about it. It screamed family. A family Kirk didn't have for a long time - with his father dead, Sam gone and his mother non-stop working in space. Kirk as a child had loathed her for that – she always being away, leaving him and Sam with their uncle. As an adult he had finally understood – she hadn't abandoned them, she - as a single mother - had desperately tried to earn enough to sustain two children and herself.

"Want some vegetable omelette? Not that I would make you something else if you don't," McCoy drawled, shaking the frying pan on the stove with skilled movements.

"Omelette sounds good, Bones."

Kirk felt the first stirrings of true calmness, when the coffee aroma slowly leaked into the room mingling with the spicy aroma of whatever tea Spock was drinking. He hadn't remembered how pleasant it was to wake up and smell real food and real coffee and not the replicated stuff he had consumed for the last years.

"Hey," Kirk said quietly, so that only Spock beside him could hear him, while Boyce and McCoy where occupied with preparing more breakfast. "You slept okay?" The words blurted out of Kirk's mouth but what he really wanted to ask was for forgiveness. Sorry for bringing you here. Sorry for taking you away from the Enterprise. Sorry. But it was the only way.

"Adequate." Spock's hands on the mug were shaking and Kirk reached for one of them, covering it in both of his own. Spock was still in no condition to truly refuse the contact of his mate although he probably wanted too.

"Oh shit, darling – your hand is like a fucking icicle," the human murmured, fighting the urge to rub it between his palms. Kirk stared at their hands, so did Spock.

Their hands were mismatched in size – the Vulcan's being swallowed up by his own. Spock always used to have long, thinner, fingers than Kirk – whose where callused and thick, but now Spock's digits where spidery and frail. Fluttering until Kirk cupped them in his own like pressing a dying flower in the pages of a book.

Johnny Cash's deep old voice filled the room. Someone – probably Bones, who was a big fan of the country-singer from the 20th century – had turned the radio on.

"And you could have it all, my empire of dirt. I will let you down. I will make you hurt…"

After some time Spock withdrew his hand and Kirk hesitantly let him.

The next weeks a daily routine was quickly established. They got up at 0830 in the morning, usually after a sleepless, nightmare ridden night.

It even got worse when the anniversary of Vulcan's destruction came and went. Spock had been screaming himself hoarse that night while Kirk had been holding him, had felt the vibrant pain of Spock's mind under his fingers, trying to think of something - anything - to say. However there were no words of comfort which didn't taste like lies and hypocrisy in the captain's mouth. So he remained silent, holding on to a man, who didn't want to hold on.

After they got up - one of them, usually Kirk would help Spock shower and dress, while the other two would busy themselves with breakfast. Spock would stumble through their cleaning activities, on unsteady legs – looking like a newborn deer – helpless and vulnerable.

Before they would eat – McCoy or Boyce would check Spock's still healing back and would change the bandages with worried gazes, murmuring about the possibility of infection or worse. Afterwards, one of them would take some readings with the tricorder while the other would check out Spock's mental activity.

During the day Kirk would try to engage his Vulcan in much physical contact as possible, touching Spock constantly, trying to keep him from slipping away. He would talk to him too about the crew, or the Enterprise, or science – carefully avoiding topics like (New) Vulcan and Pike or his parents. However he only would get monosyllabic responses – if any at all.

Spock it seemed wore his silence like skin.

Trying to coax Spock to eat was a daily fight, as were their discussions about him seeing a Vulcan healer or him taking his pain medication. Not that Spock would say or do much in these fights – he would sit there and look at them and wait for them to take action but he never would assist them, if they should do so. Sometimes when Spock was about to pass out from all the mental and physical hurt - Boyce would simply inject him with the so much needed hypo.

Whereas they could more or less easily bully him into actually taking his medication, they had no chance to get him examined by a Vulcan healer. Kirk didn't know why Spock was so afraid of them. He knew that Spock had a few routine therapy sessions with one of Starfleet's psychologists after Vulcan's destruction. Boyce had told him that the young Vulcan had attended them - albeit reluctantly - and with much prodding and poking on Pike's part.

The captain understood Spock's reluctance to see a doctor. Fuck, he hated doctor's visits too – no one expect maybe a hypochondriac – was eager to visit one. But Spock's responses were downright phobic. Kirk didn't lie to himself and pretend he had seen every angle, but what he could see was downright frightening with how afraid of the medical personal – especially of Vulcan origin - was Spock. This wasn't simply a normal fear of doctors, this was something darker, something a lot more deep-rooted, something that had psychologically crippled him and which had only got worse over the years.

Kirk wasn't a stupid man. He did know that Spock's decreasing self-worth after the Narada incident was certainly a part of the problem. Maybe even a large part of the problem – but certainly not the only part. 'Is this about you thinking that you are worth nothing now that you're sick? Or you thinking you don't deserve to be helped?' Kirk wanted to ask but never found the right moment to do so.

At the end of their days together - Kirk would be upset and frustrated and angry, hating himself for feeling any of it. He sometimes would excuse himself and leave Spock with Boyce and McCoy, while he would wander around outside, trying not to punch walls or scream, trying to clear his head - but more often than not ending up with a drink in some dubious bar - thinking about other ways to prevent that mental withdraw, which would eventually kill his Vulcan and as the evening progressed and the drinks increased he for a tiny relieving moment would even forget about McCoy, about Boyce…about Spock.

The relief however was always short-lived.

Kirk would come home, late in the evening, after the Vulcan already would have fallen asleep - drained and silent and fading. McCoy would scowl at him when he would enter the apartment - smelling of alcohol and smoke – and Boyce would be tight-lipped, his eyes glistering with fury. Kirk would ignore them both and slip wordlessly into the bedroom, he shared with his Vulcan.

There he would kiss Spock's dark hair and lie down behind the cool body, wrapping himself around the lean back, whispering apologies into white clammy skin.

When Kirk didn't took care of Spock, he often tried to educate himself more about mental and physical trauma and Vulcan telepathy and bonds; constantly questioning Bones and Boyce and even comming M'Benga and old Spock regularly, searching through Starfleet data bases and hacking into some password protected files about Vulcan culture. But no papers, no medical journals or case studies in the world could have adequately prepared Kirk for the situation he found himself in.

Spock's sickness was dictating their life, every single minute of their day and night. It was like an overwhelming shadow looming over them, coating their life in darkness and misery. All this tiptoeing, this eggshell-walking around Spock – it was exhausting and now without his work – there wasn't even a tiny bit of escape from all the agony and hurt.

The downright spiral continued as steadily at it had on the Enterprise and sometimes it was hard to remember that it was the trauma speaking when it was Spock mouth that the words were coming from.

"You should have terminated my life when you had the chance. You should have let me die on the Jellyfish…," Spock said distantly one morning - like he was reciting a regulation rule and not speaking about his own death. It had been the longest sentence he had said since they returned to Earth nearly one month ago.

Kirk had wanted desperately to contradict his statement but somehow no words came over his lips.

"Hey, Jim…"

"Hey…"

It was just Sulu's weekly routine call. There was nothing unexpected about it, but for a second, all Kirk wanted to do was see his friends, his crew again. See Sulu, and Scotty and Uhura, see Chekov again… He gripped the edges of the communicator tighter, and the thin, blunt sides nearly crumpled beneath his hands. He forced himself to let go.

"How are you…?"

"I'm…good.."

"You sound like someone kicked your puppy and then killed it…"

"This call isn't gonna turn into a therapy session, Sulu…"

"Jim…"

"No… How is life on the Enterprise?"

"We have a new acting captain – Rickwick. He transferred from the USS Akira. He's not exactly an ass but he isn't you either…and I miss you, man.."

"Did Uhura make you watch those chick-flick movies again…?"

"Fuck you…"

Kirk laughed but it sounded more than a sob.

"But really, how are you?"

"I…"

"C'mon man, talk to me…"

"Sorry…it's just…"

"Spock?"

"Yeah…he…I…fuck…I never wanted to have anything in my life that I couldn't stand losing. And then I have met Spock and he-"

"You're expecting too much of him. He's maybe never gonna be the same, you know," Sulu reminded Kirk over the communicator while Spock was fast asleep on the bed beside him.

Kirk sighed at Sulu's words. "I know. Just maybe there's a tiny chance he will be. Will be okay again. Some things you can fix, and some things you can't and I just think it's a shame to walk away from the things you can fix. I mean, Pike didn't walk away either when I needed him. He could have – in that bar - but he didn't. And I-"

"Are you doing everything for Pike?"

"No…no….I…. Spock's my friend. He's family. I would have done the same for you too.. It's just…"

There was a long pause on Kirk's end of the line before Sulu finally said, "Look, I'm not just talking about how he won't be the guy he used to be. I mean he might not even..." The Japanese took a deep breath. "He might not ever get better. Even with your help. Even with all the help in the world."

"So I should just give up?" Kirk snapped, the words coming out more harshly than he had intended, and he was instantly disgusted with himself for letting his emotions get the best of him.

"I'm just trying to be realistic here," Sulu said gently. "I mean... Have you even thought about what you're going to do if... if things don't change? You can't care for him like this forever, and certainly not all on your own."

"I'm not alone."

"You know what I mean…are you ready to sacrifice your whole carrier, your whole life for him?"

Kirk swallowed but didn't respond.

"Did he see a Vulcan healer yet?"

"No Vulcan healers…," Kirk said – his voice suddenly small and bristle. "He …reacts badly whenever I or Boyce or McCoy even mention them. I…I already forced him enough with the bonding and leaving the Enterprise and fuck… I don't want to make him do anything he doesn't want to ever again."

Before his voice could break even more - the captain abruptly ended the call and turned around to stare at the Vulcan by his side. He stroked away the fringe from Spock's forehead, looking at him, seeing all the ways a soul could bruise.

The Vulcan was not even stirring.

Spock these days was like a star. Nothing but a beautiful echo of death.