Let me disclose the gifts reserved for age
To set a crown upon your lifetime's effort.
First, the cold friction of expiring sense
Without enchantment, offering no promise
But bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit
As body and soul begin to fall asunder.
Second, the conscious impotence of rage
At human folly, and the laceration
Of laughter at what ceases to amuse.
And last, the rending pain of re-enactment
Of all that you have done, and been; the shame
Of things ill done and done to others' harm
Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

There was still a distance that was never completely closed.

Spock realized too late it never would be, not between any two entities, and that was okay.

All that ever was, is. All that ever will be, was.

At the very moment he was going to progress with his kolinahr training, at that one fortuitous moment in all of spacetime, the Voyager probe just happened to be passing close to Vulcan and called to him. It later gave him a gift of immeasurable value and rarity: it showed him exactly what it was he was wishing for, before he got it.

He was given more second chances than any creature in the universe. He came back from the dead, for Surak's sake. He was given more ideal openings for a confession—"Captain! Jim!"/"Jim. Your name is Jim."/He was dying, and he pressed his hand against the glass, blind/he had just gotten Jim off of Rura Penthe, after he had been the one to send him into danger—and all of the lost opportunities dropped into the pit of his stomach like stones.

Just keep pushing it to the back of your mind. There will be time to think about it. Later.

And indeed there will be time

Until the day there wasn't any more time.

He carried those stones almost a century and couldn't purge them. His soul never felt light again.

He found something resembling happiness, a few times. But, for the most part, Spock carried his sorrow like a dear friend, a comforting weight, and found something of stability in sadness. He carried the weight through his guilt over Romulus being destroyed, as he was sucked into the singularity, and as he hung his head in the silence of the Jellyfish the weight gave buoyancy to his chest. He could bear it. He could bear anything, under the comfort of this greater, duller pain. It was all just compensation for a man who was too foolish to grasp what was before him, and again too foolish to save a people he had vowed to save. Many times over a fool. The universe was extracting its due.

-until Vulcan was destroyed and his lungs were ripped through his ribs. This was a new level of pain, beyond comprehension, beyond even what he had felt when the Intrepid had been destroyed. Those deaths were relatively slow and sleepy, a dull but powerful pain that made him hang his head and stagger. This boiled his marrow and burned his bones to ash, and he collapsed full-weight on his knees onto the frozen stone of Delta Vega, finally folding moments after Vulcan became a pinprick in the sky. His joints hurt a long time after that, after he came out of the initial fog of shock. The pain ripped through the thin layers—years—of gauze of time in which he swaddled his pain about Jim, which had made it just comfortable enough to bear, and for the first time in a long time he found himself hallucinating strong hands gripping his upper arms as he collapsed, holding him up. Holding him together just enough that he didn't disintegrate. He was so delirious he felt a forehead press against his and a breath whispered into his parted lips, something like: "I'm here, Spock. Hold on."

Nero made a decision. Nero is solely responsible for the destruction of Vulcan. You did your best, in good faith, to save Romulus. He took his unfathomable sorrow out on you. He is like a child, lashing out in grief, looking for a villain for his narrative.

It is not your fault.

It was all true. He could not internalize it.

"You must survive, Spock. Get up. Get up. Live."

That presence, again. It was like a force pulling him to his feet. He would die in the Delta Vega climate if he was still for too long. He stood, staring at the space where Vulcan was, for time he could not measure. The presence tugged at him again.

"Live!"

Live.

I'm alive.

It was the only thing he had ever done. He had to put one foot in front of the other and walk. Live. That was all living was, when it got too much to bear. The only way out is through. Something may be on the other side. When he paused, staggering, vision going out, the presence pushed at the small of his back, saying 'Live!' What a selfish, pushy presence. It was ultimately that warm, selfish presence that kept him going until his own will could re-assert itself, after emerging from its shock. Delta Vega was not a hospitable climate to the frailties of sentient beings, to their need for pause after trauma.

He even found something so painful it was like happiness, somewhere in the aftermath of having just seen Vulcan destroyed, when the alternate James Kirk dropped into his cave on Delta Vega. He was a rawer, brasher creature with bright blue eyes and some lingering adolescent edge that sparkled like new steel at a break, something Kirk-and-not-Kirk, painfully close when he smiled, too far to touch. This Kirk had broken along different lines, with the traumas his suffered in that timeline—suffered because of Spock's failure—it is not your fault—and never quite came into focus as the Jim he had lost. He almost did. It would have been easier if there was no vestige of the old Jim but the DNA, but it was just close enough to give maddening false hope. This young Jim was not yet tempered; he may yet settle into the archetype that should endure across universes.

There is no archetype. There is no enduring 'self'. / There is a self that emerges through all trials. There is an immutable soul.

It was an irreconcilable difference. He could not come to a definitive answer despite resorting to all of the mental discipline he possessed. But this point remained: at the lowest point in his life, James Kirk appeared to take him home. It was a coincidence. Mathematically it was well within the realm of possibility. But that possibility was so impossibly small.

A lot of deeply improbable things had happened to Spock, and most of them, more improbably, an improbability upon an improbability, involved James Kirk. This is how mysticism begins: these coincidences that carry one's life, or these invisible threads that bind people despite all probability and logic.

Captain, you almost make me believe in luck.

There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference
Which resembles the others as death resembles life
Being between two lives - unflowering, between
The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:
For liberation - not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, and so liberation
From the future as well as the past.

The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

He was staring at the sky above the Guardian's planet again, alone.

He sat up, and something heavy and ovoid thumped against his sternum. He knew what it was even as he lifted the chain to draw it out from under his tunic. He traced his fingertip over the worn catch that would activate the hologram. His hand shook. He could not bring himself to push it. He dropped the pendant back under his shirt.

His bones were no longer like old wood, his skin supple, no longer like thin paper, tendons and ligaments strong, joints fluid and free of pain. He looked at the backs of his hands. They were smooth, the skin tight across the fine bones. He was wearing his blue science officer uniform, commander braid.

"Hel-loooo?"

Spock's spine almost jumped out of his skin. Kaniel was suddenly standing above him, looking down, hands on his hips.

"Do you want a ride to Vulcan?"

"Is it custom for us Qs to have to pay for our misdeeds against humanoids?"

Q glanced at Trelane. The latter had shed his ridiculous 'Kaniel' disguise and they were both lounging on the roof of the Starfleet office in ShiKahr, where Trelane had just (literally) dumped Spock on the doorstep. Q balanced his forearm on one bent knee and let the other leg dangle over the side of the roof.

"Oh, goodness no," said Q. Trelane stiffened and drew back, affronted. "I just wanted to see what would happen."

"And you did not deign to inform me of your plans before you sent me off to that Godforsaken rock to jog his memory?"

Q shrugged. Trelane huffed and crossed his arms.

"You know what will happen. You can see everything that has happened."

"Are you going to sit there in that ridiculous frock coat with those ridiculous sideburns and tell me that you are adverse to theatricality?"

Trelane sniffed. "I just don't see why you want to waste your time on that insufferable stick-in-the-mud Vulcan. He's about as much fun as watching a planet coalesce."

Q tilted his head in acquiescence. "I suppose I am enamored with the sweeping romance of it all. It's drama on a grandiose scale. Near-death scrapes, unspoken feelings, adventure, comradeship and all that. I always did find it unsatisfying that they did not end up together."

Trelane was, for once, silent. Q looked up. He was blinking rapidly and rubbing his chin.

"I just can't believe… I mean, I thought… when they visited Gothos they were all so…" He twirled his hand around. "…you know. And all that."

Trelane was still infuriatingly young. And blind. Q shrugged and leaned back on his hands.

"You weren't wrong, youngling. After all, whatever is, was. Whatever was, will be."

"Then why are we hanging about inside a temporal continuity? It's all frightfully boring and tedious."

Q leaned back further on his hands until his back arced and he was looking at Trelane upside-down.

"Because there's a unique sort of fun that results when cause follows effect."

Trelane thought for a moment, and shrugged his eyebrows to concede the point. "I daresay I can't much argue with that. Are you going to visit that delightful Captain friend of yours?"

Q smiled. "Oh, undoubtedly. Are you going to visit your delightful Captain friend when he comes through the portal shortly?"

"Oh, undoubtedly." Trelane snapped his arms to straighten out his sleeves and tugged at the cuffs. "This is the most fun I've had in an epoch. Unlike that dour, morose killjoy this actually promises to be interesting."

Spock threw himself into diplomatic work and research to make himself feel useful, take up his time. He had matched the face of the 'man' who had pushed him through the portal as one of the humanoid manifestations of an aspect of the Q continuum, combing through the Memory Alpha database and trying to get a grip on the fractal of personae, histories, alliances, and motives around him. So when Q eventually started hanging about no introduction was necessary, as he knew who Q was, and Q knew he knew who he was, so Q acted with an irritating familiarity from the start.

Then, the anomaly problem got even more sticky. Entire planets were being ported, and the sheer magnitude and quantity of anomalies were sending compensatory ripples across the various dimensions. Or, at least, that was what Q had told him, seeming if not contrite at least now put-upon and realizing what a headache this was going to be to get sorted into something resembling chaotic stability. He still had some accountability to the universe, as he lived in it, despite not being bound to as few dimensions as most lifeforms. Well, that is what he told Spock, anyway, upon appearing in his office one day, looking considerably more haggard than he had when he had pushed him through the portal. It was affectation, as was his choice of dress at any given time; he had complete control over his external appearance. So, he was looking for sympathy Spock was not particularly inclined to give.

"Ceti Alpha V has been destroyed. Ceti Alpha VI will be destroyed soon," Q had strode up and dramatically slammed his palms into Spock's desk, rattling everything. Spock watched him impassively. "There is a ragtag group of misfits in the beta quadrant close enough to start organizing an evacuation. I've put them to it. Make a call for Federation ferries to get out there."

"Why do you not call the ferries?"

"I. Am. Busy!" Q slammed his palms into the desk with each word as Spock began to type out a request to Starfleet Command. "Busy busy busy! Putting out fires and cleaning up messes and generally keeping this universe knit together."

Spock almost smiled. "Not so much fun anymore, is it?"

"Well, I do manage." Q stood and smoothed out his robes. "I was having more of a good time until 'my' turn came up in the Q que to save the universe. It comes up a lot, you know. I am in several places at once. Unlike you humanoids I become one consciousness with all incarnations of 'myself' in this timeline. So there are aspects of the greater 'me' having a bit of a lark. They're rather like the arm that gets to rest after holding up the standard. I am the arm that is getting a turn at the labor."

"What happened?"

"Another Ceti Alpha V appeared on top of this Ceti Alpha V, and bwooosh." Q spread his fingers in an explosion. "The universe is seeking balance to compensate for the upsets caused by the anomalies. Compensation. There's always a due that comes, isn't there, even across universes?"

Spock stood. Q pushed him back down in his chair.

"Oh, I wouldn't go gallivanting off to the Ceti Alpha system just yet, if I were you. There is bigger trouble headed your way."

"Oh?"

"You recall that delightful mirror universe Kirk visited some time back, where Earth is spearheading an evil empire and for reasons beyond me everybody is wearing garish reflective fabric and has seen fit to rip their sleeves off? Or has a hideous goatee, as the case may be?"

"I remember."

"Well, as of the time-I-appeared-here-ago the remnants of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance unfortunate enough to find themselves in this mess of a universe have formally decided to invade Vulcan. You should expect them within, oh, two days."

So there was that to deal with, the Klingon-Cardassian occupation. It kept Spock busy if nothing else.

Ultimately it was the same Constellation-class ship that was on hand to initiate the evacuation of Ceti Alpha VI that was able to get closest to Vulcan and provide aid. How it was able to run the blockade was still something of a mystery, and Spock suspected Q must somehow be involved, as it was nothing short of a miracle. He knew from reports that the ship was barely functional, basically held together by carbon tape, but he was still surprised when he got a visual while it was hanging about in orbit, after the dust had settled. The small crew was able to deliver some intelligence to the resistance leaders in ShiKahr, and from that information the resistance was able to orchestrate the final push to expel the Alliance.

Spock did not get to meet the Constellation crew in person until the battle had been won, though they had spoken about Ceti Alpha VI remotely before the blockade, and after, on encrypted planetary channels, once the crew was on Vulcan. It was a small crew. A Bajoran woman with hair like ochre, clothes like Vulcan sand, everything about her blood and vitality and life. This was Kira Nerys, as per the dossier he had received, a former guerrilla ('terrorist', the Cardassians had said) in the fight against the occupation of her home planet and then commanding officer on Deep Space Nine. She was wearing the civilian Bajoran uniform, at this point, though she would later in the old continuity become Starfleet. Data, a polite and pleasantly eager android with grayed synthesized skin and gold eyes, he knew from his past life, and was genuinely glad to see again, despite his tendency to ask uncomfortable questions. Something in his facial expressions and the set of his shoulders was less affectation than it was the last time they met—he was still mellow, unruffled, but the expressions he did make were more natural and less calculated. So, this version of Data must have come from a time when his emotion chip was still implanted, and he had time to grow used to it. The captain came from early twenty-first century Earth, right around the time of the Bell Riots. Although Kira and even Data had showed the most outward emotion upon encountering Spock, the captain, Spock could feel, felt the most strongly, and was compensating for a spike of adrenaline with a deadpan face and an assertive stance, hands on her hips, trying to make herself as tall as possible.

That was rather odd. Kira and Data's reactions made sense—he knew Data personally and he had become a public figure of no small renown by the time they were both plucked from their timelines. The captain had lived two-hundred years before Spock was born. He mentally filed this away and saluted with the ta'al upon approaching. The three of them returned the gesture.

"Ambassador Spock," said Data. "It is good to see you again, sir. I am glad to find you in good health."

Spock smiled a little in spite of himself. "I am glad to see you are well, yourself, Lieutenant Commander. Major. Captain. On behalf of Vulcan and the Federation I thank you for coming to our aid so rapidly."

It turned out the starship as-of-yet-unnamed had before all this mess been hovering around the Guardian of Forever, or, as it was being now called, just 'the warp', and waiting for more salvage and crew to turn up. The captain was a scientist by trade and had wanted to monitor the anomaly, because, as she had said "Why not; the ship barely runs and it was there"—the more Spock talked to Data the more it became apparent the ship even making it to Vulcan was something of a minor miracle, let alone the Ceti Alpha system—but lacking anything resembling working equipment they were just waiting for either the expertise or raw material to wash up out of the warp to get the ship running as a laboratory outpost. Data had taken charge of engineering and Kira had taken charge of, it seemed, being antsy, running and training, assisting with odd jobs, and wistfully looking out the window toward the warp when she thought nobody was looking. And it was becoming apparent, triangulating fragments of conversation with the three, that despite a lot of time spent reading on the advances of the past two/three centuries the captain was out of her depth to run a twenty-third/fourth century physics laboratory.

Spock was not sure how difficult approaching that would prove. The captain seemed prideful and standoffish at first but by this point the knot of anxiety and giddiness in the captain's gut had eased and her neutral expression was coming by naturally. They were alone in a briefing room; Data had gone to search the local junkyard and Kira had gone off somewhere unspecified.

"If you forgive my saying so, Doctor…?"

"Not yet. Candidate."

"…Captain. You are a microbiologist with knowledge at best two hundred years out of date trying to study a temporal anomaly. And though you are captaining an archaic ship, with archaic equipment, to you its technology is several paradigm shifts beyond your understanding. Making use of it will require knowledge beyond your current level."

She bristled for a moment. To Spock, it was obvious, like lines of energy making her hair stand on end, but outwardly her face was still bland. She did squint, though, barely perceptible.

"You want to come with us."

"I am offering my services as an expert in a field in which you are deficient and in which you have need of expertise."

"And the fact that we'll be hovering around the warp has nothing to do with your interest?"

Spock hesitated for a moment and blinked. "I have a passionate scientific interest in such an anomaly. It is something utterly unlike anything we have ever studied. I have had encounters with that warp in a more simple, looped-lineraized form. This is something entirely different."

He was not lying, at any rate. The captain smiled a little bit.

"It's fine. Whatever your reasons, you are welcome. You will be a valuable asset. I hope to learn a great deal from you."

"If you will excuse me, Captain, I do have some final preparations to attend to. The replicator in here is at your disposal should you wish for refreshment, and the view of the city from the balcony outside is most highly recommended. Most of this district was spared the worst of the destruction. I do also recommend you take the time to see some of the lovely architecture while you are here and browse the bazaar, which as fortune would have it re-opens today."

He still had not shaken off the ambassador role. The captain waved her hand in acknowledgement, still thinking about something else. Spock stood and walked toward the door.

"Mr. Spock."

Spock looked back at her. The captain was looking at him now and had a distant, unreadable expression. Concern?

"We'll find him. I promise."

Spock furrowed his brows. He considered saying that he had no idea who she was talking about, but he did, and she knew he did.

"…have we met before?"

She hesitated for a moment. It was something only a Vulcan or somebody of a similarly-disciplined race would notice.

"No. Not as such."

The idea of rehabilitating an out-of-date laboratory was, in a weird way, soothing. It was a potentially all-consuming job and it had immediate, tangible benefits. It would require a lot of busy work. As much as he sometimes desperately wanted his cutting-edge Enterprise facilities back, this was something to throw himself into that required a lot of work with his hands. Soldering, using simple hand tools. It helped keep his mind at least half-occupied. He spent the balance of his time reading Memory Alpha, as he suspected everybody else on the ship was doing, but there was nothing about the captain. Not a trace of anything, at all. It was something to address when his mind was less burdened; for the time being she did not seem a threat, so he focused on the laboratory. But the incongruence nagged at him.

"I have some good news, Commander." It was Data on the communicator. He was down by the warp doing his periodic scavenging for whatever it had coughed up in the meantime. "I have found some components I can use to modify the climate control module in your quarters to raise the temperature to levels more comfortable to Vulcan physiology."

This was indeed welcome news—Spock had been sleeping in thermals and under three fleece blankets and still shivering. He had been eating an unprecedented amount to stockpile the energy to control his internal thermostat as much as possible, and it wasn't enough. Data had rigged up a small heater from parts he found around the warp and more often than not Spock returned to his quarters to find Spot curled up in front of it. The ventilation system was far from secure and the marmalade cat was using it as her own highway around the ship. Spock enjoyed her company and secretly hoped Data would not put ventilation integrity too high on his list of tasks; it would be unseemly for him to admit as much.

"I would be much obliged," he said into the communicator. "Thank you. I will be handing the communicator off to Major Kira in fifteen minutes."

"Understood."

They had no formal 'shifts' as of yet and he was working the past sixteen hours straight, but his thoughts were still ruled by a military regimentation. He just had benchmarks he set for himself. He knew his body needed nourishment and rest but neither appealed much to him as of late. One, because he genuinely wasn't very hungry—despite eating a great deal of food for thermo-regulatory energy it tasted like ash and cardboard—and the other because he had been having nightmares.

"You out of here?" said Dax.

Spock nodded and rubbed his shoulder, loosening out his rotator cuff. Jadzia Dax was sitting cross-legged in front of a panel embedded in the table with an open toolbox beside her, covered in smudges from various greases and lubricants on her cheeks and her bare shoulders and hard stomach, up her arms. Spock felt cold looking at her—she had removed her jacket and undershirt and was working just in a tight breast band as she said she did not want to get grease on her clothes, even though the sonic could easily get it out.

"Contact me if you need any assistance."

Dax shooed him away. "I'm fine. I haven't worked with this sort of setup in two hundred years but it's coming back to me pretty quickly. Kind of fun, actually. It's very nostalgic."

Spock nodded and turned before she could begin some sort of anecdote about her long and varied past. Usually they were interesting, but not right now.

"Spock."

He turned around, and Dax was resting back on her hands, staring at him.

"I'm here if you need to talk."

It was the same thing McCoy kept reminding him, and Spock was close to snapping that he was well aware of their invitation and had a memory longer than an hour. But they meant well, really. It had gotten worse once Dax had some sort of argument with Q about—something, it was not entirely clear and even she did not want to get into it—and Q had revealed what his odd compatriot in the guise of Kaniel had done to Spock's memory of his past life re: making him re-live and remember all of it vividly.

They had found McCoy outside the warp three days twenty hours and two minutes ago. They had been delighted to see each other, at first, despite themselves, and by now they had settled back into a familiar ribbing companionship. It was softer, and more relaxed, this time around, after the distance of time and separation and a degree of maturity. But McCoy was still inclined to be irascible. And Dax and McCoy seemed to have developed a rapport, with Dax being overly familiar and McCoy being perplexed that a beautiful young woman had taken such easy interest in him. But, as he had told Spock, he wasn't about to "look a gift horse in the mouth".

"She asked me if still had any interest in gymnastics," said McCoy the other day, over coffee. "That's got to be something sexual, right? But I've never been a gymnast. But, damn, the bodies on some of those women. I used to go to the competitions at Ole Miss out of a purely school spirit-like interest, you know. Volunteered on the medical team."

McCoy had clicked his tongue and waggled his eyebrows, and Spock had pressed his lips together and stared at the ceiling before dressing him down for predatory and unprofessional behavior, and McCoy was genuinely offended and said he would never behave that way while acting as a medic, even as a foolish college student, and that had been the end of that particular coffee meeting. Later that day, however, McCoy showed up at his quarters to babble about how he had figured out that he had a brief sexual relationship with another host of the Dax symbiont, when they met at the gymnastics competition, and was this current host Jadzia indicating she had a good time and wanted another go? Even though he was now an old(er) man? And so on and so on. And Spock, from the bottom of his heart, genuinely did not care. But instead of saying that he gave the non-committal advice to merely ask, but McCoy said it would be inappropriate as he was CMO of the ship and in effect her physician. And Spock had replied that this was a sudden concern for acting appropriately for his office as CMO, and that had been the end of that particular evening quarters visit. But as per usual they ate in the replomat together the following morning and McCoy revealed Dax told him what had happened to Spock, at the warp. And while the other subjects of conversation had been dropped, McCoy was not going to let this go.

So there it was, his business the business of the two biggest busybodies on the ship, now, and, he was sure, the rest of the ship, although they had the tact to leave it alone. But they seemed to treat him with more sympathy, lately. And, of course, one of his two co-workers was one of those busybodies. The captain worked in the attached room on the xenobiology lab, and for the most part she kept to herself in there. She had two factors—introversion and a specialization outside his immediate work—that kept her out of his hair, for the most part. Dax had neither of these things. She was an astrophysicist as well as a biologist and confidently, overbearingly outgoing. She was also bold, flirtatious, had a smile like the sun, and, most dangerously of all, immediately understood Spock to an uncanny degree. In sum, she was like Kirk in those regards. In its past lives the Dax symbiont had many dealings with Vulcans and so was used to his mannerisms. She—also like Jim—did not expect him to act any way other than how he was. Certainly, she playfully tried to draw him out of his shell and rib him along, but he never got the feeling she was actually trying to change him on a fundamental level.

Again, too much like Jim.

Jadzia Dax had strode into the lab eight days ten hours fourteen minutes ago for the first time when Spock was elbow-deep in a mass of wires under the bench. All he had heard was footsteps, then a pause behind him, then the woman—he guessed, based on the size of shoe and weight of footfall—touring around the lab. He could not get up—he was holding the wires in place just so and trying to solder them—but his back prickled. She finally stopped behind him again.

"I'm impressed, Commander. I couldn't have done a better job myself, and I've run labs in worse shape than this."

He was still soldering. Some of that Vulcan pride started prickling up—he would very much like to meet the person who could run a lab better than he could—but he sublimated it off.

"Yes." She paused again. "Yes, I do very much like what I see here."

He finally finished soldering and scooted himself out from under the bench, turned onto his elbow. Dax was smiling at him slyly, tapping her chin with her forefinger and bracing that elbow with the opposite hand. Then he saw the mottled markings up her neck—ah. His irritation with her arrogance sublimated and was replaced with something more like respect. A Trill. This seemingly young woman had, in effect, lived multiple lifetimes. She was wearing a mid-twenty-fourth century science officer uniform.

"Lieutenant Commander. Can I help you?"

She grinned and dropped to his level. "Dax is fine. We're not exactly on a Federation ship."

"Ms. Dax, then."

"Just Dax." She held up the ta'al. She actually separated her fingers properly, too—most non-Vulcans did not understand the fundamental importance of the distance between thumb and forefinger in the symbolism. "Jadzia Dax, eighth host of the Dax symbiont. And how should I refer to you, Mr. Spock? Commander Spock? I'm afraid my Vulcan is rather rusty so I would probably garble your family name."

He returned the gesture. At least she was not trying to shake hands. "'Spock' is adequate. You are Curzon's successor."

"I am. It's good to see you again. It looks like we'll be working together on setting up this lab and studying the anomaly."

At the time, this had been the last thing he had wanted to hear. He was enjoying his solitude. It was space to meditate while he worked. But with time, her expertise paid for itself. She had actually used these versions of the equipment and had a better idea, beyond the theoretical, of how best to modify them. He had grown to feel comfortable around her, despite her relentless flirtation and friendliness. That was dangerous.

Dax was open and unguarded, but supremely confident, entirely self-possessed. She had told him apropos of nothing through their work stints that she admired his work hugely, and had always looked up to him as a historical figure, and also found him incredibly attractive in his younger form—he had looked up from his work at this point, about to cut that off immediately before she got her hopes up—but was married, and looking for her husband, a Klingon, if he would have her back. ("Married—but not dead. I can still appreciate the scenery.") She was hoping he had not 'remembered' his past life with as much visceral detail as Spock had, as their separation had been traumatic. He could not bring himself to ask. It would be unspeakably rude and presumptuous. Later he read what had happened.

Spock found Kira in the recreation room talking with McCoy and handed her the communicator. McCoy looked Spock up and down and scowled.

"You look like hell. Go to bed."

"I am planning to take rest, Doctor."

"You're planning to do that Vulcan mumbo-jumbo meditation for five minutes before you hit the ground running at full speed again."

"I had planned to allow myself half an hour."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "A whole half hour? You're getting lazy in your old age."

"I am physically thir—"

"Yes, yes, yes." McCoy waved his hand. "Just let me give you a sedative so you can get some decent sleep, for Christ's sake. Even Vulcans need to sleep after a while."

"I can assure you doctor, it is not necessary."

"Spock. It's a dreamless sleep."

McCoy was too perceptive for his own good, sometimes. And stubborn as, what had he called Spock this morning, a terrier with a bloody steak. It was an analogy that did not appeal to Spock on multiple levels and he knew that was why McCoy used it. McCoy knew, with the rest of the crew, what he could glean from the Memory Alpha archives. He knew Spock had witnessed the destruction of Vulcan in the Kelvin timeline. He knew how Jim had died. What the archive did not say was anything about Spock's turbulent feelings. "Like brothers", sure, as they had been described, but that didn't cover it.

"I would like some time to meditate first, Doctor. And then I might take you up on your offer."

McCoy grinned and clapped Spock on the upper arms. "Now there's a reasonable Vulcan for you! I'm half-tempted to have you psychologically evaluated but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Call sickbay when you're ready."

That horse with the gifts in its mouth, again, or something to that effect. Spock was too tired to ask or to care, as he also had been the last time said horse had come up. He could check the linguistics database later. McCoy was a master class unto himself in colloquial southern American English. He returned to his cabin to rest.

The transistor would be serviceable, after the grease and dirt were cleaned off it. Data wiped it down with a rag and set it aside in the pile of desirable artifacts from this trip, things that could be or would be useful, at some point. He wiped his hands while he looked around at the scattered junk in the light of the warp. At the rate things were coming through, there would soon be drifts.

He was deciding where to start next when the warp flared, and a humanoid figure was shadowed before it stepped onto the ground and the light dimmed to its usual hum. It was a Cardassian, but in Federation-standard civilian clothing. He froze and looked around, eyes huge, and settled his gaze on Data.

"This is most certainly not my closet," he said.

"It is not, no," said Data.

The archaic communicator at Data's waist chirped. "Data, come in."

Data opened the communicator. "A Cardassian male came out of the warp, Major. Civilian clothes. Early middle age."

"Is that Kira Nerys?"

The Cardassian took the communicator out of Data's hand as Data blinked in surprise and clicked it on. "Major! What an honor and a surprise!"

There was a pause. "Garak?" She did not sound thrilled.

"The very same. I take it you are in some position to allow me leave to come aboard your ship?"

There was another pause. "You can come back with Data when he's done scavenging. Kira out."

The connection ended. Data put the communicator back on his belt.

"Major Kira seems to know you, but she does not seem fond of you."

"Eh." The Cardassian—Garak—waved his hand dismissively. "She has a complicated relationship with Cardassians. It is a long story. Data, was it?"

"Yes. You are called Garak?"

"I am. So, tell me more about this spatial anomaly that seems to have spit us out on the same forsaken rock."

"It is not forsaken. It is uninhabited but we are monitoring it closely and I come down periodically to look through the inanimate objects it expels. There are some useful things from a variety of eras."

Garak sucked on his teeth. "Oh, one of those."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing, nothing, my dear android. Allow me to help you search through this junk. I'm something of an old hand at improvising and rigging electronics."

"You do not appear to be very old judging by your hands or your face, Mr. Garak."

"…I have a talent for improvising and rigging electronics. You do not have an idiomatic translator?"

Data sifted through his memory. "Ah. Yes. An idiom. Are you an engineer?"

"Just a humble tailor, I'm afraid."

Data paused and blinked for a moment, then went back to examining the hull he had found. He piecemeal between evaluating junk filled Garak in on the situation, and Garak decided all things considered it could be much worse, considering. Considering what, he had not said. Data had the feeling it was one of those things people brought up and yet at the same time did not want to discuss. It was an irrational and vexing aspect of humanoid communication.

They got together a full load and Data requested transport, and they hauled it down to the storage bay. They stopped to gossip in the hallway with Kira, who had time to get over Garak's impending appearance and almost seemed grudgingly glad to see him. But Data was anxious to get back to scavenging, as he had seen some more very attractive bits he wanted to package up and get to work on, and Garak was game to keep helping, so they broke it off and beamed back down to the warp.

By the time they got back there was a human passed out at the foot of the warp. From the distance at which they beamed down they could only see a pale hand and the top of a head of sandy hair, and the garish gold of a mid-twenty-third-century Starfleet command tunic. When they hauled the man up by his arms Garak got a good look at his face. And then at the braid on his cuffs. And then he almost dropped him. He would have, if Data had not kept his grip under the man's shoulders from behind, and the man was barely conscious but not strong enough to support himself yet.

"Is something wrong, Mr. Garak?" said Data.

"I believe we've made an exceptionally rare archaeological find."

The ship really was in poor repair. The turbolift had frozen.

Kirk sat against the turbolift wall next to the Cardassian who had hauled him up from he Guardian. He was still drained after Trelane's onslaught, and standing made him feel light-headed and his vision go out. His mind was still scattershot along memory and projection, adjusting to the compacted lifetime Trelane had forced in there, and he was having difficulty staying focused on the reality in front of him. So he stared at the Cardassian and forced himself to focus on his face, his clothes, something concrete to ground himself.

I am here. This is now.

Cardassians had small armored plates along bony prominences, along the brow ridge, along the eye socket, down the side of the broad neck and the hinge of the jaw. Their skin was grayed, ashen, cold-blooded. A boned, shallow socket like a spoon pressed into the forehead with the stem leading down to the tip of the nose, segmented. This one—who had introduced himself as Garak, which may be the truth, and a tailor, which was certainly a lie—was of slight build for a male, and his features not nearly as severe and haggard as the few images of other male Cardassians Kirk had seen. He seemed almost boyish. He was absolutely no youth. Just coy, and slightly flamboyant, and dangerous as a viper. The coyness and flamboyance only hovered to the skin. His core was solid and immovable and utterly cold.

"I don't believe for a second you're just a tailor."

"A man wears many hats in a lifetime, Captain." Garak clapped his hands together and leaned toward him. "I still cannot believe it. The great James Tiberius Kirk himself, here, in the flesh—" His eyes flickered down; he had seen Kirk's hand twitch toward a phaser that was not at his belt. "—a man of unerring instinct." He grinned and tilted his head. "I like you, Captain."

"Who do you work for? No bullshit this time."

"Nobody, at the moment. Which, as the case may be, is also your current employment circumstance." Kirk blinked, and Garak straightened and waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, you will be briefed on the circumstances soon enough, Captain. Linear time has collapsed down to this one node, and there are several versions of ourselves here. From the same timeline, from different timelines. There's a version of me still tailoring, surely, albeit with a less steady and experienced hand. And a version of me even more cynical than I myself am now—if that is even possible." He laughed. "How do we reconcile all our prerogatives, I wonder? Do we keep growing forward from the point at which we arrived? Or will we all merge together into some great singular entity? I wonder, I wonder…"

Kirk rested his against head the wall and closed his eyes. "…did you… get to live your entire life?"

"Oh, well, yes. I suppose it begs the question, if we have all those memories, what is the point of having all these versions of ourselves, if we all lived the same lives. An inclination to view things through that prism? The Holy Grail of a youthful body and the wisdom and experience of old age? I don't know, Captain. I haven't seen enough of this brave new world yet to guess."

"Were you met at the time portal by a rather nosy and troublesome minor deity?"

"I can't say that I was. I was met by a rather polite and pedantic android, the same one that aided your rescue. Why?"

Kirk did not open his eyes. Garak paused for a moment.

"James Tiberius Kirk!" The apparition in Greek robes spread his arms wide and gestured grandly. "I am Chronos, god of the flow of time, come to you as an emissary of love! I am here to give you a second chance at… love! That most powerful and greatest of human emotions!"

Kirk already had a splitting headache. And there was something discomfortingly familiar about this self-satisfied, pompous, pretentious ass. Something almost childish.

"Wouldn't Eros be more appropriate?" he grumbled.

The apparition flared in anger. "Oh, for—I swear you and that Vulcan—" He spat the word, and Kirk's stomach dropped out. "—are the most ungrateful, unromantic, uncultured—"

Childish. That's when it clicked.

"—unfeeling, infuriating, intolerable, Philistine—"

"Trelane? Is that you?"

Chronos—Trelane—might have burst a blood vessel in his temple if he actually had a circulatory system. "DID I NOT JUST SAY—"

"What do you want? I'm not in the mood for this right now."

"Oh, forget it." Trelane flashed, and he stood on the ground, no longer glowing, in his usual blue frock and riding boots. "I try to do something nice for you, I'm coming to you as a friend, on a mission of mercy, of—of—love—"

"Can you get through the next thirty seconds without saying 'love'?"

"—of—of—of—" He sputtered. "—of—you—"

"What have you done with Spock?"

"I gave him the experience of a lifetime, and I was here to do you the same boon, but maybe I won't."

"That actually sounds preferable."

"Oh does it now? Well, then maybe I will."

"Well, then, please do."

"I—" Trelane put his hands on his hips and puffed up. "That reverse psychology nonsense will not work on me!"

Kirk held up his hands. "Fine. You're too smart for me. So, what are you going to do?"

Trelane scowled for several seconds. Then something—some realization—flashed through his eyes, and he blipped out of existence—a split second—and spliced back into existence inches from Kirk's face, still scowling, and grabbed his neck. He caught the automatic punch Kirk threw and twisted his arm behind him, and they both fell to their knees as Trelane's grip tightened around his throat. He started to black out.

"…no…" said Trelane.

Trelane released his neck, and Kirk fell forward, gasping, still blind. He felt Trelane stand over him and watch him for several long seconds. When his vision finally came back and he looked up, still rubbing his throat, Trelane was rubbing his chin in thought.

"…no… yes, I daresay it might be more interesting this way. Indeed, indeed…"

Kirk's back finally unknotted, and he could fill his lungs. Trelane watched him catch his breath, still rubbing his chin, and he widened his eyes slightly as another thought occurred to him.

It was at this moment that Kirk knew his entire life. And he knew that Trelane knew. A nebula unfolded in Trelane's eyes, in his eyes, and he had a vision of Spock, old, dying, on New Vulcan, where he purposely went off to die alone, and he was clutching that pendant, that damned—

Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no…

—I never got to tell you—

"You know, I do think I like my original plan best. Never mind, then."

Kirk did not have time to yell before Trelane grabbed the top of his head and dug his fingers into his skull.

There was a flash, and then…

"If there's any true logic to the universe… we'll end up on that bridge again someday."

"I do mean," Garak was saying, "it wasn't a particularly vivid remembering of a lifetime, but ah, sort of an abstraction. Like I read about it in a book. It certainly gets to you but it's not quite the same. It's just one way things could have gone, at this point, I suppose."

His chest still felt crushed. He had been reborn, in his young, unbroken body, again, and he still felt his lungs filling with blood and his bones shattered grinding into viscera. He realized at some point he had stood and paced to the opposite end of the lift. His legs gave out and he crumpled against the wall.

"…Captain?" Garak rushed over and grabbed him under the shoulder, hauling him up. "Are you quite all right?"

Kirk waved him away and sat down, heavily, when Garak finally let him go. It took a long time for his breathing to calm and his vision to come back. Finally, his chest unknotted and he was taking in full lungfulls. Breathe in, breathe out.

Spock, I'm sorry. I should have told you—

He tried to touch Spock through glass. He tried to touch him across the barrier of death. He let himself go the most when there was something that would stop him. Convenient, that.

Breathe in.

That vengeful monster Trelane had made him watch Spock suffer alone.

Breathe out.

He watched Spock collapse when Vulcan was destroyed. His ghost—whatever it was—tried to haul him up by the forearms, tried to stabilize him, but Spock stared through him and collapsed without resistance, Kirk's fingers going through Spock's arms and he was left clenching his fists where his arms had been as Spock crumpled into a heap. The ghost collapsed to its knees in front of him and tilted its forehead against Spock's.

"I'm here, Spock. Hold on."

Breathe in.

Spock was old. He was coming to realize that painfully, watching him. And he still wanted him to live. It was selfish, but even if they had been together, even if everything had worked out the way he wanted, his lifespan was still about half of Spock's. A Vulcan who fell in love with a human was doomed to sorrow. And he still wanted all of Spock's love. And he still wanted Spock to survive.

Breathe out.

He had been the last person Spock had thought about before he died.

Spock was relieved to be dying.

I'm alive.

When his vision finally came back, and his blood pressure stabilized, he realized Garak was sitting next to him against the turbolift wall. He had produced a flask from somewhere and was holding it limply in his hand, already open, waiting for Kirk to come back to. Without looking at him, Garak handed over the flask and Kirk took it gratefully. He coughed and sputtered. Kanar. Of course. It went down about as easily as cough syrup if you weren't used to it, but it was strong, and it did clear his head.

They were silent for a long time. Finally, Garak spoke.

"Is there somebody you're looking for, Captain? Somebody you're hoping to find on this ship?"

"There are… many people I am looking for." He opened his eyes and glanced sidelong at Garak, handed back the flask. "What about you?"

Garak paused for a long time. Kirk finally turned to look straight at him, and the Cardassian was staring into the middle distance, down. He finally took a drink of his flask.

"What better friend have any of us than ourselves? Well, there was a man, once, who used to believe in pretty things like loyalty and courage and doing what is right. Maybe some version of him is out there. Maybe I will find him. I am somewhat amused, Captain. You really do have that odd cadence in your speech."

Kirk scowled at Garak, half for the complete non-answer and half for the deflection. Truth was he had a more difficult time putting words together than people thought, but he hid it well. He just had to pause sometimes to get them in order. If people thought it was a dramatic affectation it was better than people thinking he was slow. It would happen less if he was not so uptight about using the right word all the time. His literary side found it imperative. He had also trained himself out of using stalling filler words like 'um' after he'd heard once, a long time ago, in school, that it was a sign of low intelligence. It had been an old elementary school teacher in Iowa who had said this, when he was trying to give a presentation to the class and kept hemming and hawing, and he had internalized it.

Ultimately it was all a form of bluffing, and bluffing was at least fifty percent of what he did on a daily basis.

"I am sorry about this inconvenience." It was a light, male voice coming through the com, monotone but friendly. Familiar—the second party that had helped him up from the warp? "This ship is in bad repair. The lifts frequently malfunction. I will have it working again shortly."

"Could you possibly make that a priority, Mr. Data?" said Garak.

Kirk was finally back to reality enough to realize something: Garak was deeply uncomfortable. He was on edge and his eyes darted around. It was subtle—this man was used to hiding his feelings—but now that Kirk was paying attention it was blatantly obvious.

"It is the first on my list of tasks that I will complete," said Data.

Garak shrugged with his eyebrows and took another drink of his flask. He was eyeing the lights, now.

"Do you have claustrophobia?" said Kirk.

"I am not overly fond of enclosed spaces, especially when they are dark."

Kirk nodded. "Tell me about this… friend you're hoping to meet."

"It is very thoughtful that you are trying to distract me, Captain, but I am afraid your effort to take my mind off our current situation will be fruitless. I do welcome sordid and idle gossip as a matter of course, however. How eagerly you must be anticipating your reunion with your erstwhile first officer. How do you think you will make your grand entrance?"

Kirk felt like he was going to throw up.

"Okay. Three things. One—do you always derail every question about your personal life? Two—does everybody in the universe know my business? And three—Spock is here?"

"One, yes; two, I make it my business to know things and I cannot speak for every other person without the base observational skills to see which direction gravity pulls; and, three, yes. Well, that last bit according to Mr. Data; I have not as of yet had the honor of meeting your Vulcan friend. I came through the warp not long before you did."

"Oh, really; it is a tailor's business to know things."

"One overhears a great deal hemming trousers and taking in jackets. People forget you are there."

"So in the short time you have been in this… universe, as you said, you have been doing a lot of pinning and measuring."

Garak shrugged. "Do let me know if you have any garments you want altered." He looked Kirk up and down. "Or let out, in a few years."

The lights sputtered as the turbolift lurched. Garak grasped at the wall and his flask for a second—Kirk could feel him about to snap—but then the light steadied and the turbolift continued ascending. Kirk pushed himself up and stared at the control panel, as though it would magically tell him the layout of the ship. He almost blacked out, swayed, and grasped the panel to steady himself just as Garak grabbed him under the arm. He waited for his vision to return.

"Where is Spock?"

"As I said earlier, I have no idea, although given that this is a Constellation Class ship I'd venture the third or fourth level living quarters. In any case, it doesn't matter because I am taking you directly to sickbay."

"The hell you are."

The lift stopped and opened onto the fifth level. Kirk tried to shrug off Garak and press the close door button but Garak hauled him firmly out into the hallway by the upper arm. Garak looked up at the ceiling for patience and tugged him down the hall.

"Captain, you are in no condition to grapple with me."

Kirk scrabbled for Garak's pinky and tried to pull it back, but Garak grabbed his wrist without looking and did something that hurt. Kirk yelled and Garak let go of his offending hand.

"I'm serious," said Garak. "Let's not do this."

"God damn it, let me go!"

Even as he was saying that, Kirk's ankles buckled and Garak had to haul him back upright. His vision went out again for a moment.

"Ah! Doctor!" said Garak, to somebody down the hall.

"Jim!"

That was Bones. Kirk's vision finally came back as McCoy grabbed his other arm and the opposite shoulder, pausing to look him over a moment. He grinned. "By God, it is you!" He looked up at Garak, suddenly scowling. "What have you done to him? Who are you?"

"Nothing, and you may call me Garak, another refugee from the warp come to seek shelter on your lovely ship."

"He did something to my wrist."

"You were trying to break my finger, Captain. Your wrist will feel better shortly."

"I wasn't going to break it—"

"Shut up," said Bones. "Both of you. Help me get him into sickbay."