Jim paused as he passed the open rec room door. A comfortable drone of conversation drifted into the hallway. His first glance showed a few clusters of people chatting over board games or PADDs, sipping coffee or relaxed in conversation. At a table at the far end, a solitary figure with a shapely set of shoulders and a mane of glossy hair bent over the table, gaze focused on the PADD in front of her. Jim glanced up and down the empty hall, then stepped inside.

Inevitably, a few crew members noticed him as he wound his way through the tables, and nodded or lifted a hand in greeting. Jim was grateful that their current mission was so routine; he could do without the interest his appearance might otherwise have caused. But for the moment, his crew were more focused on their own pursuits than him; that was all to the good. Their ongoing banter would drown out anything he might have to say.

Uhura was seated halfway along a bench at the big corner table. She appeared absorbed in her reading, one hand propping her forehead, the other holding a steaming cup of fragrant tea in the air in front of her. Her fine-boned hand was a perfect match for the delicate china. With unbecoming curiosity, Jim wondered if either the tea or cup was a gift from a certain special someone. He resisted the urge to shake his head. Who would have guessed?

Unannounced, he slid onto the bench beside Uhura and murmured, "You realize your boyfriend has lost his marbles, don't you?"

Uhura didn't even glance at him. She must be practicing her Vulcan self-control techniques. "He's trying to keep his marbles, as I'm sure you're aware, Captain," she answered, eyes still on her PADD.

"By beaming down to a strange planet? For six weeks? With no supplies and no backup?" Jim shrugged. "I don't know, doesn't that sound just a little... crazy, to you?"

Uhura sighed, and finally looked his way. There was unhappiness in her gaze, but no apparent dislike, much to Jim's relief. He could use a respite from the almost-constant sniping. "Look, I'm not thrilled about Spock's choice, either. But it's the only solution I can think of, and the only one that Spock thinks will work for him."

"He's a fan of starvation?"

"I'm sure you're familiar with the Kahs-wan ordeal. It's a kind of... Vulcan walkabout."

"Yeah, I've heard of it. The kids go into the desert—went into desert," he amended, "and try to survive for a month or something, as a right of passage."

"I'd say Spock is going through another big transition right now, wouldn't you? He feels... he reasons that the familiarity of this ancient tradition will stabilize him. Anchor him." Her dark eyes searched his, troubled. "You do understand, don't you?"

Jim had to look away. The awareness of his own contributions to Spock's distress— if Vulcans were allowed to be distressed— resurfaced to hit him full force. He said slowly, "I'd feel better if he picked someplace safer."

"Vulcan wasn't particularly safe."

"Yeah, but at least it was known. The dangers were known..."

Uhura sighed, then turned to face him more directly. For the first time, Jim felt that he was having an actual conversation with her—not a battle of wills, but an actual discussion where they had mutual goals. It made him hopeful of having more such productive talks in the future. If this was one consequence of Spock going on leave, Jim would happily accept it. He regretted that his early relationship with Uhura had been so combative. It got tiring, feeling that she was disapproving of him all the time. Jim had had enough of that in his childhood to last him a lifetime.

Uhura glanced over her shoulder, but no one was paying them any particular attention. She lowered her voice anyway. "Captain," she said, with none of the sarcasm she usually packed into the word, "Spock needs to find himself again. Find out... who he is. So much has happened—"

"I know, I know. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like. That is, I can extrapolate, based on my own, shall we say, losses, but—"

"I'm not just referring to the obvious. You remember that mess— that huge mess we all ran into when we first got back to Earth after engaging the Narada."

Jim paused. He wasn't certain what "mess" she was thinking of. In his mind, the engagement with the Narada had been the huge mess. What had happened after they had destroyed the Romulan vessel was nothing— just the expected chaos of docking a damaged ship and arranging for repairs. Spock would be the last person Jim would have expected to be upset by that; he was born to solve hundreds of unrelated challenges every minute, and never ruffle one perfect Vulcan hair. "Uh... mess."

Uhura was giving him that look again— that "I can't believe you're this slow on the uptake" look that she was so good at. "The pictures," she prompted.

"Pictures," Jim repeated stupidly.

Her eyes flashed with a gleam of her old impatience. "The press. The media. The reception."

"Oh, the reception!" The memory leaped clear into Jim's mind: the noise, the lights, the newshounds jockeying for position, shouting out their questions and demanding poses. The whole bridge crew was present, and Bones and Scotty, of course, but it was clear that Jim and Spock had come in for the lion's share of attention.

This way, Commander! Acting Captain Kirk, let's get another one with just you and your First Officer. Spock had stood woodenly through the whole thing, refusing to answer even one question— merely saying in his soft voice, when he was pressed, "I have no comment on the matter." Yeah, Jim knew that line. The Vulcan was as far into his shell as Jim had ever seen him.

Jim returned his attention to Uhura. She was watching him intently, as if expecting him to understand something. But he didn't; not really. The reception had lasted maybe thirty minutes— Starfleet was keen to show them off, the young "heroes" who'd saved Earth, daring and fresh-faced and blah blah blah. It was supposedly a good recruitment device, and Jim supposed it had worked. Despite the near annihilation of the senior class, enrollment in Starfleet was up almost 200 percent, according to Admiral Pike (who had apparently taken on his old role of cheerleader during his recuperation period).

But Starfleet had deliberately limited exposure to the Enterprise crew shortly after their return, probably to prevent any of their officers (Jim recognized himself) from putting their foot in their mouths. Not that Spock would do that, though. Jim suddenly remembered a herd of reporters (he could summon up no other term to describe them) thundering past him up the hall, chasing a distant Spock who had turned the far corner in the company of Admiral Barnett. Commander, Commander! they'd shouted in overlapping voices, galloping past him— Jim obviously escaping their notice even in his uniform, as Starfleet was still flush with young human officers, whereas Vulcans were an even more exotic rarity now than they had been when Spock had joined, as the first Vulcan Starfleet recruit ever.

"Yeah, that was a crazy time," Jim acknowledged to Uhura, unsure what she was getting at.

"To you, it was crazy. To Spock, it was torture. Just think: all those questions, all that adulation from the vid-watching masses, all those people calling him a hero when he felt his error in judgment had resulted in his mother's death."

Jim snapped to attention. "What error in judgment?"

Uhura hesitated. "He realizes now that he'd stood too close to the edge of the cliff. He should have anticipated that the ledge would crumble."

"It was a cliff! There was a group of people behind him. Where the hell else was he supposed to stand?"

"He thinks they should have gathered nearer the cliff wall."

"Where they would be in danger from falling rocks. You realize, if his mother had been hit by one of those, he'd be blaming himself for not standing nearer the ledge."

Uhura's eyes flickered; he could see that she was assessing his remark. "That's true."

Jim felt a surge of triumph. It wasn't every day—hardly ever, in fact— that he got to offer a useful suggestion to one of the brightest people in his crew. He hoped she'd find a way to get the idea back to Spock, to give him a different viewpoint to ponder. "What else?"

Uhura reluctantly pulled herself back to the conversation. "It really bothered Spock, the way the newsnets were just saturated with information about him those first few days. He's such a private person, and there it was, all over the news: his name, his face, his life story, night after night. 'The young officer who shot down the drill that would have sent Earth the way of Vulcan, who chose Starfleet over the Vulcan Science Academy,'— you know how it was; you must have heard all this."

Jim nodded. Although Starfleet had taken the stance that all the personnel who'd come through the Battle of Vulcan (dead or alive) were heroes, he and Spock had come in for special recognition as the two people who'd actually beamed aboard the enemy vessel and turned the tide. Frankly, the acclamation hadn't bothered Jim too much. On one level, he felt it was his due— a belated acknowledgement that a supposed loser like him could actually amount to something if he wanted to. On the other hand, he didn't believe a word of it, as he knew at heart he was a pretty normal guy (if not actually a loser) who'd managed to turn things around, mainly by good luck. A reasonable person didn't take credit for luck.

It was just as Admiral Pike had said to him, when Jim had visited him in the hospital shortly after their return. "I know it's annoying, but try to tolerate the pictures and the press. A little bit of beauty won't hurt Starfleet's cause."

Jim frowned. "Beauty?"

"You and Spock." Pike grinned, his smile wry either because of the audacity of his statement or the pain he was in, or possibly both. "You don't think it's an accident that Starfleet set you up for so many interviews, do you?"

Jim was momentarily taken aback. "I wondered why they were so eager to get me flapping my gums." He smiled sardonically. "I'm not exactly known for my tact."

"You do well enough. And it helps people... to put a face on things." Pike gazed at Jim with drug-hazed eyes. "You don't mind being our poster boy for a while?"

Jim resisted the urge to laugh. "Considering my last poster job was my face tacked up in the police station with a 'Wanted' sign underneath it, this gig isn't so bad."

Pike had laughed— or rather, rumbled a breathy wheeze which was the closest thing he could manage in his condition. "The world needs heroes," he gasped.

Jim grew serious. "I'm not a hero."

"Right here, right now, you're a hero. Accept it. It will pass soon enough."

And it had. Mercifully, Jim was soon drawn into the whirl of activities that included assuming a true captaincy over his first posting— something that he'd never imagined this soon for himself even in his cockiest scenarios. After those first few days of photo sessions and interviews, Jim never saw Spock at all. Jim had assumed he was in mourning, or doing whatever things a half-Vulcan did after his mother was murdered and his planet destroyed. All anyone at Starfleet could tell Jim was that Spock was "occupied." He wasn't even sure if Spock was going to resign his commission or not until he showed up on the bridge at the eleventh hour, apparently resigned to serve under the same person who'd booted him from the Captain position earlier. It was an interesting move, one which Jim wasn't quite satisfied he understood.

"They followed him everywhere," Uhura said, drawing Jim back to the present. "Every time he went out in public. He's so... visible. And everyone in the world knew his face."

Jim was suddenly curious. "Where did he hide out?"

"With the Vulcan delegation, mostly." Her lips pressed together. "They didn't exactly fawn over him."

"They wouldn't." Jim met her gaze. "Do they blame him?"

"That would be 'illogical'." Uhura gave him a bitter smile. "No, they don't blame him for Vulcan. But they do consider him an inferior being because of his heritage. Not that they'd ever say it outright, but it's continually implied." Her delicate hand closed to a fist— a very lovely fist, Jim thought, but Uhura was absorbed in her own thoughts. "That must have been particularly hard for him to bear. Not for himself; I think Spock has a pretty clear view of who he is and what he wants. But it must have been difficult for him and his father to be exposed to that kind of condescension, considering..." She trailed off.

Jim shook his head. "Talk about your mind benders." At her inquiring gaze, he added, "On the one side, he's got the humans slobbering all over him because he's this half-Vulcan— or should I say, half-human— savior of Earth, and on the other he's got the Vulcans reviling him because he's this human-contaminated rebel who rejected Vulcan just a few short years before it was destroyed. If that's not schizophrenic, I don't know what is."

"That's why he needs some time away from it all, to find himself again. No matter how independent Spock is and believes himself to be, he still defined himself primarily in terms of his background: his human half playing out against his Vulcan heritage."

"And now all that's gone up in smoke."

"More like crushed to oblivion."

Jim sighed. He looked idly around the room, noticing that most of the crew members who'd been in here when he'd arrived had left to resume their duties, to be replaced with fresh knots of people on break. It was time for Jim to move on as well. "Okay."

Uhura narrowed her eyes. "Okay, what?"

"Okay. I fully approve Spock's leave, on his terms."

Uhura seemed to hold her breath, and then nodded. She turned her teacup before her on the table, twisting it round between tense fingers. The remnant of tea at the bottom has long since gone cold.

Jim nudged her shoulder. "Hey, I agreed to the plan. Isn't this your cue to give me a big, happy smile?"

"Oh, I'm happy. Relieved, actually. It's just..." She tried to laugh, but her expression continued to be grave. "It is dangerous, him going away for so long to an unsurveyed planet."

Jim rolled his eyes. "This conversation would have been a lot shorter if you'd only said that earlier."

"It doesn't matter what we say or think. Spock needs this. You know it, and I know it." Her gaze returned to her teacup, seeming to bore into it as she turned it around and around.

Softly, Jim asked, "What do you need, Lieutenant?"

She winced, as if struck by a spasm of sadness. Then, because she was Uhura and fearless, she turned to meet his gaze, even though he could then see that, indeed, she was fighting tears. "I just want him to be happy," she whispered.

Jim hesitated. "He's Vulcan, Uhura. He may never be happy."

"We have to let him try." She stood abruptly. "Excuse me."

She strode from the room, eyes fixed on her teacup so she wouldn't have to meet the gazes of any of her comrades.

Jim sighed heavily, then pushed himself up. The first thing he had to do was contact Pike. Then, plot a course that would take Spock near enough to his chosen getaway that he wouldn't waste all his leave time in transit. Jim only hoped that they'd be able to get him back again after his leave was over.