He had wanted to come to the Bridge. Jim was confronted by that fact as he hunkered beside the fallen body of his Chief Engineer. He had known Scotty didn't go to Engineering during the invasion. They had found DeSalle there, obviously the leader of the valiant group that tried to hold Engineering. They had all died, as mercilessly, hopelessly and gruesomely as all the rest of his crew had died. He had known then that Scotty had stayed on the Bridge, holding the center seat as long as he could, making the hardest decisions of his life.

They had found him lying on the floor in sticky, drying pools of blood, in front of Spock's Science station. Ensign Evans of Security was face down by the lift doors. Lt. Palmer was collapsed and stiff over the communications station. The automatic distress call was still weakly signaling. Arex and Riley were dead on the floor at the helm, their blood had run together and drenched the carpet.

They had moved Scotty, reverently, so that Spock could interface with the main computer. The Vulcan was bent over the console, reluctant to sit in the blood spattered chair.

"Captain," he paused and had to clear his throat, "This will require your override command."

Kirk rose like a very old man. "What?"

"The computer is waiting for the final code to begin the countdown to self-destruct."

Prickles of ice water rained down his spine. His throat dried to the consistency of Vulcan sand. All this time... all this time they had been crawling and struggling and climbing through a floating bomb waiting to explode. Desperation pulled his voice out of his throat.

"Computer! This is the Captain! Abort destruct sequence, code 1-2-3-continuity."

The countdown on the clock vanished. The computer's voice, broken and splintered and weak, said, "Destruction sequence aborted."

Kirk slumped forward and only kept from falling by catching his hands on the console beside Spock. He was drained suddenly. He glanced at Spock, but the Vulcan was focused on his work. The soft blue glow of the emergency lighting and the science viewer cast his face in shadows. He looked demonic, possessed. Kirk shivered. He needed all this to stop for a moment...

And he knew it would not.

Time, he sighed, had become both their enemy and their ally. He sank down his spine set against the console until he sat loose-limbed on the floor, bone weary from staring too long across the expanse of a lost battlefield. He scrubbed the heels of his hands against his gritty eyelids and leaned back against the console, eyes closing tight.

When he opened then again, Spock was gazing down at him gravely.

"Is there something you require, Captain?" he asked.

A burst of hysterical laughter bubbled up inside Jim and he swallowed it convulsively. He would not let this drive him mad - he would NOT.

"I've already asked you for the impossible, Spock," he said, finally.

Lights and shadows played across satanic features that had become even more beloved over the last few hours. The scientific brain was at work, calculations taking place at breakneck speeds, even as Spock tried to formulate an answer for him. Something flared in night-dark eyes, something deep and abiding; something so complex Jim could not even begin to guess what elements comprised it.

"Hypothetically it is not impossible," Spock said, "Were it, I would have told you. It is illogical for me to pursue a path that is clearly impossible."

Jim bit back a sad smile and allowed himself the misty memory of Daphne paraphrasing Lewis Carrol by claiming that Spock could do six impossible things before breakfast. Daphne had loved Spock and she understood him in ways Jim did not, as if she had acquired all the pieces of a puzzle that was visible only to her. Jim valued Spock's 'alieness' and counted on it. Daphne had understood the root of that alieness and nurtured it, while at the same time thriving in its presence.

"We came so close, Spock," Jim said, at last, "Scotty was going to destroy her before allowing the Bridge to be taken. If he had succeeded..."

He paused unable to go on. Spock finished it for him, "You and I would have come back into the time stream in space, surrounded by whatever was left of the ship."

"And died instantly," Jim said, unnecessarily.

Spock inhaled and looked as if he was about to explain in detail exactly how long it would take to die in a vacuum. Jim quelled him with a look.

Spock turned his attention back to the computer, lean fingers dancing over the console. Kirk looked around, mostly at the ceiling, briefly at his command chair. This was what he had left - the Enterprise and his First Officer.

The Enterprise, even as badly damaged within the titanium walls as she was, would keep them safe from the cold death of space. They would be warm, have breathable air, light, the significant miracle of gravity enabling them to walk around, even food if they ever discovered they wanted to eat again. He had taken all of that for granted, distracted as he had been by the aftermath of the violence that had taken place within these pristine walls. He looked out the stars on the dim view screen. The Enterprise was drifting and they had made no attempt to stop her. Without her crew she had no destination, no purpose but to drift slowly among the stars.

But she still functioned, still worked, still kept he and Spock alive so that they could return the ones who were her true heart and soul.

That's my girl, Jim thought, that's my good girl...

But still...

"Spock," he began, "the ship's systems..."

"Running a diagnostic now," was the even and calm reply. Not surprising. Spock was almost always a step ahead of him. The Vulcan glanced at him, "If we are to be here until we are 'old and gray' as you put it, we will need to conserve power. I've shut down life support in all nonessential areas. We will have to return to Cargo Bay 2. I have rigged a bypass there so I can access the main computer."

Jim managed a wry smile. "Got it all figured out, huh?" he asked softly.

Spock leaned back and steepled his fingers in front of him. "Not the important part," he admitted. He met Jim's gaze and for a moment some of the harsh Vulcan shielding fell away and left only Spock. "I would very much like my wife back," he said, frankly.

Not for the first time since this nightmare had begun the two shared a long look. They were bound, he and Spock. Not in the same way that Spock was bound to Daphne, but it was love nontheless: friendship, comraderie, loyalty, respect, admiration, dependence on one other for the things the other lacked, even the understanding that they would do what they wanted and be who they were, bound at the moment even by the shared loss of their friends and family. Somehow the Iowa farmboy and the Vulcan/Terran hybrid had forged a bond that had, until those moment, filled in each other's missing pieces.

Now they both had too many missing pieces and too many of them were shared.

"We'll get her back, Spock," Kirk said, in that voice that defied the gods and the heavens and fate, "We'll get them all back."