AN: Well holy cow! You guys are overwhelmingly supportive of new people, aren't you? I'm so happy Act 1 got such a warm reception! Hopefully the remaining five acts (including this one) will as well. My twin sister flopped on the ground and whined until I promised I'd post this part tonight, because it's her favorite. I'm a little partial to it myself, but that's mostly because Kirk gets to be seen as Super Cool and Awesome. Which is, of course, total win. (Kind of like Bones, who is also total win.) Still, this one could definitely go either way. I hope it gets the same "GRAAAH AWESOME!" response as the first one, but I suppose we'll see.

I am again Taking Liberties by messing with some details that haven't been established in the Reboot continuum. Also I'm messing with the English language, but only once, and it isn't anything that hasn't been done before. So… Fair game!

Yeah, and you can read whatever you want into the Kirk/Spock interactions. Go nuts.

Act 2

In Which the Captain is Laid Low

By a Bug

It started innocuously, which, in ironic hindsight, should actually have been a clue. Kirk was distracted. At first, it was small and easy to miss. Instead of ending a conversation with a pithy comment, Jim would just nod and walk away, thinking of something else. But he was a Starfleet captain, after all, and they usually had something else on their minds. The distraction manifested on the bridge in the form of long, nearly silent shifts spend under Kirk's watch as he sat in his chair and stared at nothing, which was creepy but not altogether unappreciated. He sometimes missed a meal or break, but it still didn't seem like much of a problem.

It took less than two days for the constant distraction to present itself as a concern. Kirk began to wander away in the middle of conversations, muttering to himself with a faint frown line marring the smooth skin of his forehead. He fiddled with his food but never ate, at least not in the presence of his crew. His fingers twitched. His too blue eyes darted around, following something no one else could see.

"The captain has gone insane," Chekov said mournfully when Kirk finally didn't show up for his shift at all.

Uhura rolled her eyes. "He isn't insane. He's just…something. We'll have Dr. McCoy check him over," she decided, comming sickbay.

"McCoy here," the doctor answered. "What's wrong?"

"Probably nothing," Uhura assured him. "Captain hasn't arrived for his shift yet, and we were just checking to see if he's with you."

There was a long and accusatory pause. "Alright," Bones demanded, "what haven't you been telling me and how long haven't you been telling me about it?"

"Dr. McCoy, this is Spock," the first officer interjected. "We have no reason to believe the cause is medical, but the captain has been distracted of late."

"Distracted how?"

"Forgetting to eat," Sulu said, ticking points off on his fingers, "walking away in the middle of conversations, muttering to himself—"

"Mr. Spock," McCoy interrupted with the brevity of a doctor preparing for war, "the captain's signal is confined to his quarters. Meet me there immediately." His next admission came through clenched teeth, each word dragged from him with great, grudging reluctance. "I might need your…assistance. Everyone else, I'll keep you posted."

Spock turned the conn over to Sulu before striding purposefully to Kirk's quarters. Bones met him there a moment later, taking a deep breath before punching the emergency access code. Whatever Spock had been expecting, it wasn't what he saw. From Bones' muttered curses, though, it was exactly what the doctor had expected.

Jim stood with his back to the door, studying a dizzying hodgepodge of words, symbols and equations drawn all over the far wall. Spock couldn't guess what it was supposed to mean and didn't waste time puzzling through the odd cipher. Instead, he kept close on McCoy's heels as the doctor approached Jim as carefully as a handler approached a spooked and dangerous animal.

"Jim," he called softly. "Jim, it's Bones. Can you talk to me for a second?"

Kirk half turned, but only for a moment. His eyes never drifted from the mess on his wall. "It's here, Bones, it has to be. I know it. If I can just study it long enough, I'm sure I'll…" He faded off vaguely, gnawing a thumbnail.

"Captain," Spock said, out of his depth but willing to play along, "perhaps if you explain your problem, I can be of assistance in solving it."

Jim made an absent motion of dismissal but didn't reply.

"That's a hilarious suggestion," McCoy muttered dryly, "coming from you." Which made no sense, but that seemed to be the way the whole confrontation was headed, so Spock let it pass without comment. "Jim," the doctor said firmly, "tell me what you're seeing."

Spock shot McCoy a thoughtful glance. Was the captain insane?

"I've come up with a few more reactions, but I can't… Well, how is it any different?" he demanded, shoulders tense. "It's all the same reasoning, so I thought maybe if I looked at it from— But no, that's the same too."

McCoy lifted a tricorder slowly, aiming it at Kirk's back. The readings made him curse, fluidly and in several languages. "Damn it, Jim," he murmured heavily. "We should have noticed."

"What is it?" Spock asked quietly. When the doctor showed him the readings, he felt a slight shiver of pure shock. "Are those accurate?"

"Yeah." McCoy lowered the device, sighing and rubbing his forehead. "Funny how he has to move right into high grade fever before his behavior starts to strike us as odd."

There were rebuttals that could be made, but none of them rang true in the face of Captain Kirk's obvious distress. "So it is the fever that has caused him to hallucinate?"

"He isn't so much hallucinating as fixating really, really intently on a problem." Bones motioned to the bizarre drawings as Kirk darted forward to add a few more. "He's calculating. Or planning, or preparing. Who knows? Right now we have to immobilize him so I can get the fever down and replenish his fluids. He probably hasn't been eating well lately, either, and I'll have to address that too."

"What are your suggestions for immobilization?"

McCoy made a frustrated sound. "I don't know, Spock. I'm a doctor, not a combat tactician. It would probably be better if we avoid tranquilizing him, though. I don't want to introduce anything foreign to his system until I can confirm a diagnosis."

Spock turned the problem over in his mind, looking at it logically. To subdue the captain, they would have to make him part with his…calculations. The best way to accomplish that was to try and engage him in conversation, though he seemed reluctant or unable to be distracted from his goal. Perhaps a more direct approach than an offer to simply talk it out? "Captain," Spock began, moving forward until he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Jim, observing his colorful expression of madness. "I find it difficult to understand the conclusions you have drawn. If I am to assist you as your first officer, I must be privy to your thought process." He glanced sidelong at Jim, noting the troubled expression blooming on his face. "Perhaps if you explained in a simpler manner?"

Now Jim frowned, motioning jerkily at the wall. "I'm not sure how much clearer I can make it for you, Mr. Spock. The issue at hand is obvious."

"I am…unfamiliar with this cipher."

Under normal circumstances, such an admission would probably prompt a smirk and wiseass comment. This time, Jim only shook his head vaguely, not in denial so much as confusion as the fever took his thoughts from him. "Well, uh…I'm not sure how to help you with that."

Bingo, as the humans said. "If it does not seem too bold," the Vulcan suggested blandly, "you could teach it to me through a mind meld."

Kirk frowned at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Spock, I don't know how to mind meld. What do you take me for?"

Bones groaned in the background, but Spock maintained his well-taught calm. "Perhaps then, Captain, I might initialize the meld. For the sake of your plan," he added when Kirk opened his mouth.

Jim frowned thoughtfully. "My plan?"

"Yes, Captain. To use a Vulcan mind meld to communicate your cipher so that I might help with your calculations."

"Oh." Jim nodded. "That plan. Yeah, sure, that sounds great. More like something that isn't less than what I've already planned, anyway."

Neither of the coherent parties in the roomed paused to pick apart the non-logic. Instead, Spock reached up, slowly and carefully, to spread the fingers of his right hand over the blazing skin of Jim's psi-points. Dizzying, disjointed thoughts flooded his mind, so illogical that for a moment they through off even the Vulcan's equilibrium. His free hand gripped Jim's too warm shoulder to anchor his physical self. When Spock looked at the nonsense scribbled on the wall through Jim's perception, it all fell into place. They were calculations, written in a Creole of logic puzzles and equations underpinned by a slew of languages, dozens of jarringly different conclusions to a question Spock didn't understand.

His lack of comprehension stirred an ember of frustration in Jim's mind. The captain tried, in a vague, halfhearted sort of way, to pull out of the meld. So Spock surfaced just enough to lead them both to the nearest flat surface (Jim's bed, as a matter of fact) and settled them there quite firmly. With his captain sheltered close by his side, Spock pressed deeper into Jim's mind, determined to understand, to soothe and anchor beyond the reach of even fever.

Jim's fever-riddled mind was nothing like he'd expected. Quicksilver thoughts swarmed like fireflies, uncoordinated and easily scattered, brushing against Spock's consciousness with startling heat. Spock calmed the frenzy, urging Jim's mind to a low buzz of restless distraction. Outside, somewhere distant and unimportant, he felt McCoy rearrange their pliant bodies, folding Jim against the Vulcan to protect the gentle press of Spock's fingers. McCoy commed his sickbay, requesting supplies and reinforcements as he turned Kirk's quarters into a hastily fashioned quarantine.

Jim's mind spiked and surged in the absence of Spock's full attention. The Vulcan quickly redirected his thoughts, moving carefully toward the knot of tension and ingenuity that represented whatever odd obsession held Jim's muddled concern. What he found hidden in the darkest core of James Kirk's mind startled Spock badly, rattling his consciousness with disbelief bordering on horrified awe.

He was standing with his father on the deck of the USS Kelvin during his twelve-minute command, watching the scene unfold to the ultimate conclusion of death. "Stop," Jim would say periodically, freezing the scene. "Go back." The tableau obeyed his command, zipping in reverse until Jim was satisfied. Then he would tweak reality, moving this person or altering that command, and let the picture resume. Always it ended in George Kirk's death. Always. So, "Stop," Jim would say. "Go back." A thousand different changes, a hundred different choices. "Stop. Go back."

Spock touched the scene, trying to determine how long his captain had tortured himself with the fate of his long-dead father, and could find no conscious beginning. Kirk had always known why his father wasn't around, had taught himself to read on the reports and stories written about it. He'd been fighting the Kobayashi Maru program since the day of his birth, analyzing his father's choices, proud of the captain he'd been but frustrated by the loss their family had to suffer. What else could he have done? With more time or resources or planning, what might he have done differently? Done better? To this mind, fevered or no, there was no such thing as a no-win scenario.

If I cannot change the outcome, let me change the world.

"Stop. Go back."

It humbled Spock and shamed him in equal measure. Jim's actions made more sense now, in that terrible Kirkian way most of his actions seemed to do eventually. What had he been thinking, bringing this man of all people up on academic charges? Kobayashi Maru was his lifeblood. He had done nothing to the program he didn't do to himself.

"Stop. Go back."

(And his first thought, upon realizing the program's designed intent, had not been, No fair. It had been, They're teaching a bunch of green academy students to be defeatable. Someone out there is stupid.)

Far away, Kirk's body shifted, restless and so hot.

"Can't you get him to stay still?" Bones asked, frustrated as he ran scan after scan with no results.

The best way to get Jim to still was to calm his mind, which would not be possible if he continued poking at his internal doomsday scenario. Spock searched his captain's mind briefly, soothing as he went, trying to locate something from his past that might show him the best way to pacify an agitated Jim Kirk. He found it in the form of a memory.

Jim, barely six and torn with fever, scribbled on the walls of his room, trying to find the ultimate answer to why. (Why is Dad gone? Why does Mom have to suffer so much? Why can't I figure out what Dad could have done differently to keep us from ending up like this?) His mother eventually found him there, increasingly desperate in his calculations, and called to him with the light, pure notes of an old song written in a language lost to time. She sat in the doorway to his room, waiting until her young son stopped his furious scribbling and turned his face up to the sound of her singing, eyes half-lidded and distant. The marker fell from his fingers. She gathered him close to her breast, cradling him until the doctor arrived.

So music, and his mother, could calm his fevered mind. Unfortunately, his mother was somewhat unavailable, and Spock didn't think Dr. McCoy was in a position to provide them with songs. But there was music in Jim, hidden in every corner of his subconscious. So Spock tapped into the most soothing melodies available, going so far as to supply his own whenever Kirk drifted from his mental embrace. Eventually, the scene of his father's death faded to barely background noise, ever-present but momentarily forgettable. Jim turned to Spock's presence in his mind, lifting his attention to the gentle songs woven around him. His firefly thoughts stilled, clustering harmlessly in Spock's hold.

Within the hour, McCoy had a diagnosis. "It's a variant of Dengue fever," he said with an unhappy frown. "Apparently, he got it when he was a little kid, and it's one of those strains that just crops up every now and then. He should have been inoculated, of course, but… Well, I guess his mom wasn't the best at keeping up with shots." He sighed, rubbing his forehead.

Spock sat up against the headboard of Jim's bed, waiting passively for the bad news still to come. Jim was curled next to him on the bed, stretched along his side. The Vulcan kept his fingers close to the psi-points, knowing the fever would spike again without knowing when. If Jim so much as twitched, Spock would drop back into his mind with a blanket of calming thoughts and peaceful melodies.

"It's going to take at least a day to synthesize his medicine," Bones admitted reluctantly. "Until then, we'll need to keep him hydrated and calm. Unfortunately, his response to new medication can be…intense. We'll have to be aggressive if he develops an allergic reaction, which is tricky with a fully sedated patient. I hate to ask it, but—"

Jim shifted with a frown and a slight groan, thoughtlessly pressing his face into Spock's side. Spock responded by spreading his long fingers along the psi-points, soothing the restless what ifs that plagued a troublingly brilliant and agile mind. "I will stay with the captain," the Vulcan murmured. "It is only logical, after all, that we do whatever we must to preserve his health."

Bones shook his head ruefully. "Especially since he won't do anything about it on his own."

"Indeed," Spock agreed dryly. The fever began to build again, so he turned his attention back to Jim, dropping easily into the turmoil of his mind. McCoy left without another word.

Days later, Jim came back into consciousness with a groan and a cough. He looked around his room blearily, trying to understand. "What happened?" he asked, voice hoarse.

Bones helped him with a glass of water, mouth pressed into a thin, unhappy line. Other than Spock, he was the only one in the room. "You've been sick, Jim," the doctor informed him. "Very sick. You're still in recovery for the next three days or so." He settled a glare on his befuddled captain, putting the glass on a bedside table. "Thanks a lot for not letting anyone know when you were starting to feel poorly, by the way."

Jim lifted his hands in weak objection. "I didn't realize I was feeling poorly."

"So you didn't notice the muscle and joint pain, or a spitting headache, or lack of appetite bordering on nausea?"

"...No?"

McCoy jabbed a furious finger at Kirk, anger bubbling to the surface. "You were running a fever that could have killed you, Jim!" he scolded. "It would have, if we'd been even a day later realizing how sick you were! You can't keep neglecting yourself like this, or one of these days you're going to get yourself killed! The fever was so bad," he snarled, "you were hallucinating. You drew all over your wall! It took hours to get it clean again!"

"Oh." Jim thought about that, considering the days he was missing in his mental calendar. Nearly a week now with only vague impressions, none of which made any sense. (Spock again, close in his thoughts, brushing his mind with such a gentle touch, but not the same Spock as before, and not for the same reason. And wasn't that just crazy?) Anything could have happened in those days, but it would have to have been spectacular to explain the first officer's placid presence at his sickbed. "Well," he asked with a lopsided smile, "did I at least say something funny? Y'know, during the hallucinations?"

Spock's hands curled into fists without his knowledge as McCoy sputtered in wordless outrage.

Stop. Go back.

"No, Jim," the Vulcan said, keeping his voice low to compensate for the emotion he could not fully suppress. Those too blue eye swung to him, weary and already drifting closed again.

"No?" he echoed around a yawn.

If I cannot change the outcome…

"Nothing you said was funny."

Let me change the world.