The morning of the Psych exam Jim got a call from Bones on Vulcan. He looked vaguely sunburnt and rather unhappy.
"So what's Vulcan like?"
"Too darn hot is what. I grew up in Georgia, summers there were hot, this is suicidal! At least you'll be joining in with my suffering soon. Thank god for small mercies, huh?"
"So, how's Uhura?"
McCoy's face fell a little. "I haven't seen or heard from her since I got here. I don't think she even knows I'm here. I don't think she'd care."
Jim thought back to the night it all started to go wrong. Jim had been pressed up against a wall, Sybok's lips on his. He had been certain that it had been going somewhere when Bones had called. When Jim had found him he was sprawled out on the sofa, almost empty bottle of bourbon hanging from his grip. He had told Jim how he hadn't heard from Uhura since the dinner party, but that he had bumped into her at the Academy. She had barely said anything to him, and when he had asked her out for a coffee she had told him that it wasn't a good idea. Then she had left without another word. Leonard had been heartbroken.
Of course he'd never have admitted it outright, but Jim knew Len. He didn't drown himself in alcohol anymore, not unless there was something seriously wrong. They had both sat on his floor and drained another bottle, talking about Sybok, about the academy, trying desperately to avoid talking about Uhura, but it always came back to her in the end.
By the time he had sobered up the next day he was on the next ship to Vulcan.
"It doesn't matter anyway, I've got enough on my plate here. I had no idea how many of my xenobiology lectures I'd completely forgotten until now."
Jim laughed, and Leonard smiled wryly at the sound. "So when's your last exam?"
"This afternoon. Psych test."
He paled. "Psych test, huh? You'll be fine kid, just keep calm and you'll be fine."
"I am calm, Bones, what are you talking about?" Jim said, frowning.
"Come on, Jim, you and I both know that you haven't had the most emotionally stable life. You've got some issues. Ones that would probably have been easier to handle if you'd just gone to the shrink like I suggested."
He dismissed McCoy's worries with a nonchalant wave of his hand. "Yeah, yeah. I'll be fine. I have my issues, but I reckon I've just about learnt to hide them by now."
"Sure, kid. Look after yourself."
Jim had been pacing outside the Academy building for ten minutes before he decided to go in. For all his bravado, the psych test worried him. He had arrived forty minutes early, something totally unheard of when it came to Jim Kirk. He followed the signs to a room in the western-most wing of the building. There was a desk in the centre of the room, and a chair on either side of it, otherwise the room seemed empty. Jim sat down in the chair closest to him and waited. He had been early.
There was an odd clock on the wall to his left, all rotating squares and no numbers. The squares turned for another twenty minutes before Jim started to get really antsy. Tentatively he got up from his seat and peered out into the corridor. It was eerily quiet for the middle of a busy weekday. He glanced at the clock once more before leaving to see if he could find out what was going on.
He made his way down the corridor and round the corner. He could vaguely hear the sound of alarms caterwauling in the distance. He sped up to a jog. The sirens were getting louder. As he broke into a run he could see the flashing red lights just ahead of him, and a man running as best he could, a clear limp in his left leg.
"Hey!" Jim called. "Hey! What's going on?"
The man came to a halt just in front of him, panting and sweating profusely. "My lab! There was an explosion, there's radiation leaking everywhere, and the automated system isn't working!"
Jim stilled. "Shit, is everyone out of the lab?"
"Everyone but my wife. She's trapped in there, I can't free her on my own, but the longer she is in there, the more radiation she will be exposed to!"
It didn't even take Jim a full second before he nodded. "I'll go with you."
"But you'll be exposed to severe levels of radiation saving someone you have no connection to!"
"If I don't help you then your wife will die. I won't let that happen."
The man nodded slowly before pointing Jim down the corridor to a door at the end. Inside was a woman, trapped under a large, broken section of piping.
"Come on, it'll take both of us to shift this." Jim said.
The man nodded and ran over to the other side of the pipe. Jim knelt down next to the woman, who was crying silently around a vicious-looking black eye.
"Hey, my name's Jim, me and your husband are going to try and shift this pipe, okay? It might hurt, and it might take a few tries, but we'll get you out of here, I promise."
The woman said nothing, but nodded nervously.
He placed his hands under the pipe and shifted his weight until he felt stable. "I'm all set over here. You?"
"Yeah." Can the reply from the other side of the pipe.
"On the count of three, lift it and drag it backwards." He called. "One. Two. Three!"
With a metallic groan, the section of pipe shifted. The woman cried out, but crawled out from underneath the pipe just before Jim lost all strength, throwing the pipe back down.
The man rushed over to the woman and gathered her into his arms, before looking up at Jim. "Thank you."
Jim nodded, looking around at the wreck of a room. "The radiation is leaking out into the complex, we need to find a way to contain it. You said that this room has an automated containment feature right?" The man nodded. "So that means that once this room is sealed, it contains the radiation until it can be dealt with. So we just have to find a way to seal the room."
The man frowned. "The only way to close the door is the manual override, but that's inside the room. Someone would have to stay inside the room. That would be suicide!"
"No! There must be another way!"
The man steeled himself. "There's no other way. I have to do it."
"No!" Jim shouted, grabbing his arm. "Don't you dare go near that door!"
"But-"
Jim looked at the man and his wife, and swallowed thickly. "I'll do it."
The man was about to protest again when Jim put a hand up to stop him. "You have a wife who needs looking after, she looks like she is suffering from severe radiation poisoning. You two have a life to get back to. I don't have anyone who needs me."
A curious expression darkened the man's features before he nodded, taking his wife by the arm and leading her away. The sirens were still blaring as Jim took one last look at the only escape before he closed his eyes and pressed the button. As the doors closed in front of him he thought about his father. This must have been how he felt, that cold resignation, knowing that the life he had spent so long forging was slipping away. He took one last breath and waited for the darkness and the pain to come.
It didn't come. He released the breath. His legs began to shake, and he felt the room beginning to spin.
"James."
The door slid open with a decided whoosh and a figure was stood by his side, a steadying hand gripping his arm. The figure's voice was cold, but laced with concern. Jim cracked open an eye. Spock's face swam into view, his brow creased and his eyes stony.
"We've got to stop meeting like this." Jim said weakly.
The Vulcan sighed, a hint of amusement flickering across his face. "Indeed. Drink this."
Spock handed him a bottle of water. Jim took a sip, then another, his head clearing a little as he did.
"What are you doing here?"
"I work as an instructor at the Academy when I am on Earth. I designed this test and have been observing."
"That was the test? Well I guess I failed that one." Jim said, laughing bitterly.
A strange expression graced the Vulcan's features. "On the contrary, Mister Kirk, you passed quite conclusively."
"You're kidding!" He said woozily.
"Vulcans do not 'kid'."
Jim's laughter was bright and clear and lit up his face. Spock's grip faltered.
"Thanks."
"I have not done anything that requires your thanks." He took his hand from Jim's arm and stepped away, bowing stiffly. "Please excuse me. I have work to attend to."
"Sure. Thanks for the water at least."
Chris came to pick him up in the car. They didn't talk for most of the journey home, until Chris pulled over into a layby.
"Spock told me what happened."
"Did he?"
"Yeah. That test can be pretty fucked up, but we rarely have anyone choose self-sacrifice."
"Huh."
"Why did you do it, Jim?"
Jim frowned. "Because it was the right thing to do."
"The right thing, or just what your father would have done?"
He looked up at his step-father, disquieted. "What?"
Christopher sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "Jim, what your father did was heroic, it saved a lot of people's lives, but I honestly can't believe that there wasn't another way."
"If there was, don't you think he would have thought of it?" he replied indignantly.
"There were other ways to pass that test, but you chose death."
Jim was silent. Pike sighed again.
"Look, what you did showed an incredible amount of compassion and resolve. You'll make an incredible captain one day, but please don't ever tell your mother about this. If she found out that you'd choose to leave her as well … I don't know what it would do to her."
Unable to meet his step-father's gaze, Jim only nodded. Pike started up the car again, and they returned to silence. He greeted his wife with a smile, and nothing more was said of it, but Jim was certain that there was a new weight on his shoulders, and a shadow in his gaze.
"Spock?" Uhura called, rapping her knuckles on the doorframe.
Spock was sat cross-legged on the floor, but cocked a brow in acknowledgement.
"Please come in, Nyota." he said softly.
"Everyone is waiting for you. You've been in here since you got here." She paused, looking around the room. The lights were dim and there was incense burning in front of a small shrine.
She sat tentatively on the edge of the bed and smiled wistfully at the Vulcan. "Are you alright, Spock?
Spock hummed thoughtfully before speaking. "I have been ... meditating on whether or not one can obtain any sort of pleasure purely from observing a pair of particularly fine eyes in a handsome face."
Nyota's brows shot up. "You were meditating on … fine eyes? Fine eyes in a handsome face?" She said incredulously. "Any face in particular?"
The Vulcan frowned and replied curtly, "No."
"No?" She echoed.
Spock remained silent for a moment before speaking again. "Kirk."
"What about him?"
"His eyes are … unusual."
Nyota looked at him quizzically. "Unusual in what way?"
"They are blue."
"That's not uncommon amongst Caucasian Terrans."
Spock fell silent again. He wasn't going to voice it, but the reason he had been thinking on them was that their shade of blue was so uncanny, almost impossibly so, that they haunted him. He saw the shade of Kirk's eyes every time he looked up, that clear, brilliant blue of summer sky.
The Psych exam was Jim's last before their flight to Vulcan. It took them nearly a week to get there, but Jim had never felt more exhilarated in his life. There was something about being on a starship. If he had ever had any doubts about want to be in Starfleet, this would have quelled them all. There wasn't a moment that the ship was quiet. There was a constant hum, like the ship itself was alive and breathing, and just the way the stars sped past … it was more than anything that Jim could have ever dreamed of. More than Earth ever had, flying through the stars felt like home.
Vulcan was nothing like what Jim had been expecting. The earth was reasonably red, it was true, and it was sweltering, a dry heat that seemed to permeate even the longest shadows, but Shi'Kahr itself was not the sprawling city he had been expecting. He wasn't sure whether to expect shining metal towers as far as the eye could see, or ancient sandstone structures, dark and oppressive. What he got was hundreds of strange, asymmetric buildings built into the side of the colossal crags that littered the Vulcan landscape. Each was made of flawless, smooth stone, and devoid of any glass. Every window opened the buildings to the outside world, but inside the buildings was just as advanced, if not more so than any of the modern homes on Earth, yet it felt as though each of the buildings had been there for hundreds of years. And on the very top of the tallest buildings were the pipes. It was the first thing that Jim had noticed when he stepped off the ship; the haunting, harmony of pipes singing in the high winds that whistled through the tallest towers.
"What's with the pipes?"
His mother shielded her eyes from the early afternoon suns and looked up at the set of pipes closest to them. "It was a part of Vulcan culture long before Surak introduced Vulcans to the concepts of logic and restraint. They are all perfectly in tune, and in harmony with one another. It's supposed to symbolise the harmony that one can find simply by existing in tune with one another."
"That sounds too poetic for Vulcans." Jim scoffed.
Winona frowned at him. "You know that I am not the fondest of Vulcans, but now we are here you must respect them for who and what they are. You'll find out a lot more about them as a people while we're here, you may find it's not all that surprising to find something so poetic entrenched into their society."
Jim sighed and continued through the city. There were a surprising number of green areas in the centre, swathes of scrub plants that reminded Jim of heather, and tall spiny trees with small bulbous fruit. He was also surprised by the sheer variety of Vulcans. He had only ever seen Vulcans with skin so pale it was almost translucent, but here there were Vulcans with deep olive skin, and some so swarthy they looked almost melanic, but all with severe brows, and sleek, dark hair. It pleased him to see the diversity. Perhaps his mother was right, perhaps there was more to these people than the stuck up ambassadors he had met on Earth.
The house they had been given to stay in was akin to the rest of the buildings in Shi'Kahr; light, airy, and flawlessly built. Most of the residential areas were much flatter than the towering city blocks, with very few of the houses having more than one floor. Their own apartment was all on the ground floor, all painted stone and chrome surfaces. Jim stood by the window, looking out over The Forge, taking it all in.
"Jim, dear, please tell me you packed your formalwear. I didn't check before we left."
Jim sighed, turning back into the house. "Mom, I'm not a kid any more, I can back my own damn bags."
Winona raised her hands in mock surrender. "Alright, alright. Just make sure they're all straightened out for tonight."
"Tonight?"
"We've been invited to spend the evening with T'Pau, one of the eldest and most respected Vulcans, so behave yourself, okay?"
Jim rolled his eyes. "Sure thing."
"No repeat of last time?" She said firmly.
"No, no repeat of last time."
She nodded and walked back out into the sunshine.
T'Pau's house was larger than any that Jim had seen on the planet so far, with several floors, and rooms upon rooms filled with Vulcan artefacts. He couldn't read Vulcan at the best of times, but the strange spirals, hooks, and flowing lines looked almost lyrical, and were completely illegible to Jim. They were led up the stairs by a young Vulcan woman, her hair cropped close to her face, and her expression blank.
The room they were escorted to was intricately decorated, with religious symbols littering the walls, and in the centre of the room were several chaise longe. Perched on the one farthest from the door was a Vulcan man, and an older Vulcan woman, who Jim assumed was T'Pau.
"Christopher Pike, Winona Pike, and James Kirk." Said the young woman before departing, leaving them in the room together.
T'Pau looked up from the conversation she had been having and looked over the three of them carefully. The Vulcan woman appeared to have a perpetually stern expression, but somehow less rigid than the Vulcans Jim had met before, although he wasn't certain whether that was truly her demeanour, or just her skin softening with age. Her greying hair was piled ceremoniously on the top of her head in twisting braids, but despite all of that her eyes were dark, sharp, and calculating. She was smaller than Jim in every way. She was slight, almost so slim that she seemed fragile, but everything about her manner and way of speaking contradicted that assumption entirely.
"T'Pau, it is an honour to meet you." Pike said, bowing low.
T'Pau nodded in return. "And I thee."
The man she had been talking to got to his feet and bowed. "I am Selek, and this is my cousin." He said, gesturing to the corner of the room.
Stood, looking at them with his customary brooding look on his face, was Spock. He did not seem as surprised to see Jim, as Jim was to see him.
"Spock!"
The Vulcan bowed. "James."
T'Pau looked from the Vulcan to the Human and back. "Thee know the Human, Spock?"
"I do, T'Pau."
The old Vulcan said nothing, but continued to watch them intently.
"What are you doing here?"
Spock looked at T'Pau and Selek before turning back to Jim. "T'Pau is a very high ranking priestess, an Elder. I am paying my respects, as is customary."
"I see. So being invited here is kind of a big deal for me then, huh?"
Spock raised a brow, but was silent.
"I'll take that as a yes."
T'Pau's attentions had been diverted to his father, and Selek was talking as animatedly as a Vulcan could muster to his mother, so Jim walked over to Spock, who was still brooding solemnly in the corner.
"I didn't know you were on Vulcan. When I saw you at the Academy I assumed you were working there." He said.
"I was, but that was the last examination that I had to oversee."
Something in his voice sounded off, but no matter how much Jim studied his face, he couldn't crack the mask. "Huh. Okay."
The two of them fell silent again. Only the muted talking from the small group, and the gentle sound of the Vulcan lyre drifting through from the adjacent room.
"I do not have the talent which some people, your people most of all, seem to possess," Spock said quietly, "of conversing easily with people, particularly those with whom I am not already acquainted. I find it difficult to judge the tone of the conversation, and to appear interested in their concerns. I see you do it with such ease, but it is not something that I have ever fully grasped."
Jim looked up at him. His the mask that only minutes before had seemed impenetrable, was suddenly strangely expressive. There was a vulnerability to him that Jim hadn't seen before, or maybe wasn't willing to see.
"Well," Jim began, "My Mom used to make me take piano lessons when I was little. I hated it, I could never play as well as my tutor and that always frustrated me. Since then I've learnt that the reason I could never play like her was that I never practised."
He gave the Vulcan a pointed look, a burgeoning smile on his face.
"I get the impression that I am being teased."
Jim laughed. "Tease? You? No one would dare."
Spock frowned, and Jim sighed. "What I'm saying is that if you spent more time talking to people rather than judging them from afar, you may find that you're not as bad at socialising as you think."
With that Jim got up and went to join his parents once again, leaving Spock looking contemplatively after him.
When they returned that night Jim replicated himself a mug of steaming Earl Grey tea with just a squeeze of lemon juice. As he retreated back into him room, mug in hand, he caught his mother regarding him with a sad smile.
"What?"
She stood up and walked over to him, placing a hand to her son's face. "You know, everyone always compares you to Ge- to your father, but you're more like me than you know."
Jim frowned. "What are talking about all of a sudden?"
"You'll figure it out eventually." Winona said, rolling her eyes and pressing a kiss to her son's cheek. "I did."
With that she bid him goodnight and left him to his thoughts.
Spock had refused to be taken in by his charms and looks. He had refused to find him attractive. He had convinced himself that no good could come of admiring a male of the species since no children could come of such an alliance and therefore the whole debacle would be a pointless exercise. Not to mention he found Humans barely tolerable in their most sedate nature, whereas Kirk was so bright and loud and brash that he found that he couldn't spend too much time around him before he became completely exhausted with the effort of being in his company. He had tried to look at him without admiration at the ball, and when they next met, he looked at him only to criticise. That was when the trouble started.
No sooner had he decided that he couldn't find a single part of Kirk's altogether too-human face that he found even the slightest bit attractive, he found the whole thing completely vilified by the incredible expression of his brilliantly blue eyes. Once he realised this, everything started to fall apart.
He had noticed before that Kirk had small, pale scars on his face and arms, he stood unevenly, and often slouched. His smile was lopsided and his teeth were not completely straight. However, in noticing these things he was forced to acknowledge the pleasing, golden colour of his skin, the way his body was slim, and toned; an almost perfect specimen of a male of his race, and in spite of everything, he found that his smiles were warm and genuine.
He was quick to anger, but also quick to laugh.
Being in his company had become something of an addiction. It was true that Kirk was bright and loud and brash, nothing like the other members of his species that Spock would normally spend his time with, but he was so bright that the Vulcan often had to look away, due to the sheer intensity of him. He was loud but his laughter and conversation could bring an entire room to life. He was impetuous, but honest in a way that Spock had never encountered with anyone else he had ever met before.
Spock sighed heavily, looking out over Shi'Kahr, sleepy in its pre-dawn twilight. Of course Jim had no idea about any of this. To him Spock was only the stony Vulcan who told him that he wasn't handsome enough to warrant a dance.
