'Been taking Sacha for a walk?' Jim asked as Spock stamped the snow off his boots and stepped into the house. 'Uh, she's soaking wet, Spock. I'll put her in the utility until she dries off, if that's all right with you.'

'Yes, of course,' Spock said. He did not wish to cover his grandparents' house with sand and salt water. 'She does not often have the opportunity to swim. I believe she – made the most of it, as you would say.'

'I believe she did,' Jim laughed. He bent down to stroke Sacha's head. 'Come on, girl. I'll take her harness off, Spock, and wash the sand off it. I don't know how, but she's got it plastered all over her.'

'Thank you, Jim,' Spock said.

He stood by the door, listening as Jim led Sacha away, talking to her brightly. He remembered the path he had followed into the sitting room when he had first visited his grandparents and followed the same route carefully to find a chair. When Jim returned he was sitting in an armchair with his fingers steepled before his face, letting warmth creep back into his body while he let his thoughts wander.

'Have you eaten, Spock? Your grandpa's still asleep and I don't want to wake him, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind me fixing us some coffee and toast.'

'Thank you, Jim,' Spock nodded.

He wanted to ask immediately for help in contacting the surgeon that McCoy had recommended, but that would require checking his messages for the details the doctor had promised to send him and contacting the surgeon's department himself. He would need Jim's help to access his grandparents' communications terminal and put the call through. He was certain that Jim, in his human way, would prefer coffee and breakfast before dealing with these things.

He stood and went back into the hall, extending his cane and recalling the path to his room upstairs. He closed his eyes. In this enclosed space the jumble of colours and shapes were more confusing than helpful. Distance was a particularly treacherous thing because things that were close could appear far away, and vice versa.

He went upstairs and into his room, trying not to make too much noise with the cane on the wooden floor and skirting boards upstairs. He could sense the presence of his grandfather and did not want to wake him.

He was at the head of the stairs with the padd in his hand when he heard his grandfather call out, 'Spock?'

He turned and moved toward the voice. He was not sure where his grandparents' room was, and was working on a poorly remembered memory of the house when he was a child.

His cane pushed along the skirting board and then bumped out and skipped inward at the door frame. This was where the voice had come from. He put his hand on the unpainted wood of the door, but did not open it.

'Yes, grandpa?' he said.

'Come on in here, Spock,' his voice came from beyond the door.

Spock hesitated, uncertain. 'Do you require something, grandpa?'

There was a low chuckle. 'Yes, Spock. I require you. Come on in.'

Spock took a breath, then opened the door. The room was lit so dimly that there were barely any features to see that might help him navigate.

'Come on in, Spock,' his grandfather said again. 'Take a seat. On the bed, son. Don't stand on ceremony. I'd come to you but I'm stiff when I wake up. It takes time for my arms and legs to start cooperating.'

The room smelt of his grandma's perfume and various skin products, mixed up with wood, moth deterrent, and old paper. Spock walked carefully toward his grandfather's voice until the cane touched softness at knee height.

'That's it, son. Sit down,' his grandfather told him. Then he shivered. 'You brought the cold in with you, Spock. You've been out?'

'I took Sacha for a walk,' Spock explained. 'It has just started snowing again.'

'Well, never mind. I'm warm enough under the covers. Sit down.'

Spock sat uncomfortably on the edge of the mattress, and his grandfather laughed again.

'You were built for the military, Spock,' he said. 'Back straight as a ramrod.'

'Starfleet is not a military institution, grandpa,' Spock reminded him. 'And the Vulcan people, as a rule, are not militaristic.'

'You know, I did quite a lot of research into the Vulcans when your mother told us she was marrying a Vulcan man,' his grandfather told him conversationally. 'Don't look so surprised.' (Spock did not bother to refute that he looked surprised.) 'I may come across to you as a hoary old man who's barely been off world and doesn't care what's beyond the moon. Some days I look up at the night sky and I can't believe there are people up there in space, even though I've been there myself. I tell you, that one trip to Vulcan was enough for me, at the speeds they travelled those days. And the heat. Good lord... But no. I was interested, Spock, for your mother's sake and for my own. I found out a lot about Vulcan culture and society. Sat at my computer researching for hours, even went over to San Francisco and talked to a couple of Vulcans there. I found out enough to be worried about Amanda, and enough to reassure myself that despite my worries she'd be all right. It's a big thing, you know, losing your daughter to another world. It's a hard thing. It took me some time to forgive Sarek – '

'Forgive?' Spock echoed, an eyebrow raising up.

'Yes, Spock. Forgive,' his grandfather said in a carefully tolerant tone. 'Forgive this alien man who was older than I was taking my baby girl away to another world. Forgive him for being different, exotic, strange. For being stronger than me, cleverer than me, better than me in every way. The Ambassador to all of Vulcan taking my daughter – and here I was, just some guy from the East coast who'd plodded along all my life, never doing anything notable, never putting my name out there. Just some human guy.'

Spock was taken aback. He had always admired his grandfather as a person, as a man who looked after his family, as the man who had brought up Amanda to be such a valuable and graceful person, a strong woman and a good mother. Certainly he had never made a name for himself anywhere outside his own circles, but that did not make him any less admirable a person.

'Grandpa, you are not – ' he began.

'No, no, Spock,' his grandfather murmured across his words. 'No, say what you like, but when you put me alongside this guy from Vulcan, the Ambassador you see on the news, older than me, wiser than me, cleverer than me – No, I did not like him taking my little girl away. No father would. Not straight out, when his girl comes to him and tells him it's that person that she's marrying. If she'd come saying she was marrying the King of England I would have been just as suspicious, just as defensive. But no. She made a good decision. Your father is a good man. They had a good son. I wished your mom had been able to have more, but things don't always work out like you want them.'

'I would accept that as an axiom,' Spock nodded, caught briefly in a place where he wondered how it would be to have a brother or a sister, a true brother or sister, child of both his mother and his father. There was Sybok, but that was not the same. He was so much older, fully Vulcan, and so very –

No. He cut that thought off. He made it his business to think of Sybok as little as possible. There was no profit in dwelling on him.

He wondered if his mother regretted that Spock was her only child. He knew that just bringing this one pregnancy to term had been a difficult and traumatic experience. He had not been the first child conceived. He did not know if he had been the last. Somehow he had never thought to ask his mother if she and Sarek had tried again. He suspected that if she had she would not want to discuss it.

'You do, however, have other grandchildren,' he reminded his grandfather.

'Yes, Spock, but none of them are quite like you. None of them are your mother's child.'

'That much seems quite self-evident,' Spock nodded.

'No, I don't mean it like that, Spock. I don't mean it logically, scientifically,' his grandfather said with a hint of impatience. 'The addition of your father and your mother didn't result in a scientific equation. It resulted in you. More and different to the sum of your parts. What I'm trying to say, Spock, is that I'm glad of you. You. You are a unique and special person. At first I thought you'd just be a little Vulcan, one like every other Vulcan. I thought your whole race was a race of people who were all the same. But I know different now. You are all unique, just like humans. You are and are not your father. And I can see your mother in you too, all through you. I can see your grandmother. Hell, I can see myself in you. You're stubborn as a block of wood, just like me. And I can see my mom and dad in you, sometimes my sisters. I can see my Aunt Nettie, just in the way you hold your hands behind your back. I don't say these things enough to people. I don't tell them they're special. I don't tell them I – love them. I never said that enough to your grandma, and now she's – '

He stopped abruptly, before his voice began to break.

'Grandma is getting better,' Spock reminded him gently. 'She is getting well.'

'She's so old, Spock,' he said in something like a whisper. 'We both are.' He cleared his throat, moved restlessly in the bed, then said, 'I thought I could avoid saying anything about her, avoid all – this. This emotion. It must be disgusting to you, Spock. But I can't avoid talking about her. I never could.'

'Emotion does not disgust me, grandpa,' Spock said. He shifted up the bed until he was sitting closer to the head. He reached out his hand and after a hesitation his grandfather's hand touched his and closed around it. Spock closed his eyes. His grandfather's emotions were chaotic, strong, overwhelming. He was filled with love and fear. Spock tightened his hand and projected calm reassurance.

'We're both so old, Spock,' his grandfather said in a desperate tone. 'Your father's only middle aged, isn't he? Well we're not. Half a decade younger than him, and we're old, old people. Frail, fragile human beings.'

The realisation hit Spock like a wave. He felt as if he were falling. Perhaps he was only picking up on his grandfather's fear. He did not know. But it was a real, real thing. Some day soon his grandparents would die. Following them would be his mother. Jim, McCoy, Christine. Christine... He was Vulcan. He would outlive them all. He would lose them all, and there was nothing he could do to change that. Perhaps this was why his people tried so hard to suppress their love, because love, inevitably, was a loss too great to be borne.

He swallowed hard.

'Grandma is getting well,' he said again. 'She will be home soon, I am sure.'

'Yes,' his grandfather said. 'Yes, I'm sure she will.'

The old man stirred and the mattress moved up and down under Spock.

'Here, help me up,' he said. 'I'm ready to get up now. My bones have come alive.'

Spock stood and reached out his hand. His grandfather took it and stood up, putting a lot of weight through the grip. Spock held him until he was sure he was steady, then let go.

'The Captain is making coffee downstairs,' he said. 'I will go down and tell him to put out an extra mug.'

He turned to go downstairs, considering what his grandfather had said, and what he had felt. His fear had been real and deep. It was not a fear of dying. It was a fear of losing his wife before he himself succumbed to age.

'I thought I'd lost you,' Kirk said in an amused tone as Spock came into the kitchen.

'I was talking with my grandfather,' Spock replied.

'You look pensive, Spock?'

Spock shook his head. 'Not pensive,' he said. 'We were talking of – serious issues.'

Life, death, and love, he thought. The most serious issues of them all.

Jim seemed to understand his preoccupation and the fact that he did not wish to talk about it, because he turned back to the kitchen counter and started moving things about there.

'Oh, I said I would ask you to make an extra mug of coffee,' Spock remembered.

'I'll do that,' Kirk replied. 'I'll get out some more bread too. I held off on the toast when it was obvious you weren't coming right back down. Nothing worse than cold toast.'

There was a multitude of things worse than cold toast, but Spock did not point that out to his captain. He had had plenty of practice getting used to figures of speech in growing up with a human mother, even if she did try to modify her language in deference to Vulcan directness. Metaphors were ingrained in human language, it seemed.

'After breakfast, Jim, will you help me to contact the hospital about my eye surgery?' he asked. 'I want to get it arranged as soon as possible.'

Kirk turned round swiftly. 'Dammit, Spock, why didn't you mention it as soon as you came in?' he asked. 'I would have helped you then!'

'I have observed that humans usually need coffee, if not breakfast, in order to function in a useful manner,' Spock pointed out in a level tone.

Jim laughed. 'Are you saying I'm useless before I get some caffeine into me, Spock?' he asked.

'Not at all, Captain, but – '

Kirk waved his protest away. 'Mr Spock, you are a perceptive man. I will get the coffee and toast done, and then I will feel awake enough to help you contact the hospital. Perhaps by this evening we'll have a schedule for the operation.'