Spock.

She tossed her burnished hair off her shoulder and ignored the heat at her back. Even still this far away she could not trust herself to look too closely at him, in spite of the flames and dangers, a warm flush of wanting still possessed her at the thought of him. Rage brighter than the surrounding flames burned in her along with desire.

What were you that you could do this to me?

First Officer of the Enterprise; and he was striding towards the building on which she stood, with purpose. He was coming for her.

The thought stirred her to action. She ran to the door that led to the stairs back down into the bowels of the building and reached for the handle. She started to grasp it and wrenched her hand back with a gasp. It was hot. The staircase must be on fire; the rooms below it an inferno. Flames licked the edges of the roof. It would not hold much longer.

And all at once, the rage ran out of her. Spock had kept her from taking her own life once. He could not prevent it now. She had failed. She could not go back to the Empire.

Taking a deep breath she reached once more for the handle.

"THEA! Don't," his voice, filled with command, using the name she shared with no one, jerked her around to face him, fury and desire once again tumbling through her blood.

He was standing at the edge of the roof, having clearly somehow just climbed up the side of the building. In another time, in another age, it might even have been heroic, romantic. In another time he may have done it because he loved her.

That he had done it at all was only salt in her already wounded heart.

"Everything below us is on fire," he said, taking a step towards her. "Come with me."

"Why?" she demanded, gray eyes flashing. "I would have killed you. I still want you to die."

"I've no doubt of it," Spock replied, calmly, as if they were not standing precariously on the roof of a building about to go down in flames. His eyes were on her, steady but with some horror, as if he stared into some fathomless night.

"Then why do you care what becomes of me? Even now, if you save me, I will use everything in my power to destroy you and your precious Enterprise. Before you I hated Star Fleet as a matter of duty but you made it personal. Why do continue to prevent me from killing myself, as I should have done all those months ago when you left me in disgrace!"

Roofing dissolved in a shower of sparks and a scorching wall of flame erupted behind her but she stood her ground.

"It is the Vulcan way," Spock replied, "Thea…."

The second use of her name by that magnetic, melodious voice, the one that had haunted her dreams for months, fanned the flames of her own hatred and she launched herself at him, screaming a vile curse in her own tongue. Her plan to destroy him slowly over time was collapsing around her. The best she could hope was to take him with her into death.

Spock braced for the impact, caught her, his hand finding the junction of her neck and shoulder just as her hand connected with his face. The blow knocked his head sideways but his aim was also true. Pressure from his fingers cut off the flow of blood to her brain and she collapsed in his arms.

He held her for a moment, cradling her dead weight and struggling for breath. He was mortally exhausted, pain a constant companion now. Breathing was agony. He longed to lie down and just let it claim him.

But that was not why he had come to Vulcan, and not why he had climbed up here. Summoning mind control learned at the feet of his masters, Spock lifted the Romulan Commander over his shoulder; secured the rope he had brought with him to a metal support and began to climb down.

Unlike the Commander, he had a reason to live – a blond-haired, tawny eyed reason to live.