Leonard was not, as a habit, an avid watcher of people. Unfortunately, having tied himself to Jim as he had and with Jim in luxurious exile, he was left with little else to do. So he watched, and occasionally reported what he saw. It fed into Jim's abrupt introversion, which irked him, but he figured it couldn't last forever.

Jane settled in with the adaptability of a child, her curiosity and the conspicuous lack of authority winning out over her fear in a matter better measured in hours than days. She was like Jim in that regard, then.

Spock, on the other hand, usually looked like a disgruntled bear. This was one of the nicer analogies Leonard thought up with all the endless free time he had now to knock around the sprawling empty castle they were residing in.

Not that he could blame the guy - if it'd been him and Johanna, he'd have spent the better part of a week screaming bloody murder at anything that breathed or shined too bright. So really? Spock was taking it all pretty well.

And then Jim started doing things.

Oh, not himself - he avidly refused to leave the north wing like a witch had turned him into a hideous beast (one hadn't, McCoy had made sure to check after day five). No, Jim used his charm to get other people to do things.

First it was The Tea Incident. Spock had come down on day six, dressed to the nines in the clothes that came in on day five, sat down with Jane to his usual simple breakfast (and her usual exotic one) and took precisely one sip of the tea before bristling like an angry cat.

"This is vulcan tea." he accused the maid who'd brought it for him.

"Yes, sir." She confirmed. Jim liked his staff to have backbones. Only way they could tolerate him.

"Humans rarely appreciate Vulcan tea."

"Yes, sir."

"Are there any other vulcans in the household?"

"No, sir."

Spock looked at the maid. The maid looked at Spock. Leonard had to refrain from playing anything dramatic on his PADD.

Spock went back to his tea, and the maid went back to her work.

This was all very amusing (hey, he took what he could get) until the garden incident. On day eight, when Jane had started to stray and Spock had started to let her, Leonard was ambushed by a dozen andorians with pitchforks who demanded he "show them to the gardens."

Leonard was not aware they had gardens and wondered briefly if it was a creative alien threat, but he doubted anyone would send such conspicuous assassins.

He was proven wrong (about the gardens, thankfully). The gardens - sad, overrun things - were transformed over the course of two days into some of the nicest walking paths Leonard had had the pleasure of, well, walking. Of course, they weren't for him.

Spock was lured like a bee to honey. Jim had the place bursting at the seams with questionable plant life, which turned out to be of great interest to his vulcan...something. Terrorist, Leonard thought dryly, on day thirteen when Jim came crying to him about his back because he'd been sleeping on his office couch. Jim's terribly frightening Vulcan.

As effective as these things seemed to be at loosening Spock up to his new living arrangements, nothing worked as fast as the shower of gifts he sent Jane's way. Leonard reported that she liked trying new food? Suddenly the kitchen was stocked with the ingredients for the best dishes from all one-hundred and nineteen federation planets (plus a few others). Leonard reported she liked to look at the stars? They got an observatory. She liked paper books? Open season on the previously off-limits paper library Jim had hoarded. Leonard reported he should just go ask her himself? Leonard got puppy eyes for an hour until he gave something of use.

This was all well and good, mostly because he knew something had to give. And Jane was Jim's daughter, so boy did it ever.

"Doctor McCoy."

Spock greeted, feeling the prickle of the doctor's mind approaching long before he saw him. Everything had been brighter since the doctor's treatments took effect, sharper than it had been since he first sold. He'd had difficulty blocking everything out, and at times it felt like looking at the sun after a period too long in darkness. He relished every stinging moment.

Leonard was often a study in contradiction. He seemed angry for the majority of the time they spoke, but was in fact somewhat thrilled.

Spock suspected he was usually quite bored.

Predictably, Leonard's expression pinched into a put-upon scowl at the sight of him.

It was day twenty, and Spock was heading to the garden with one of the Admiral's exceedingly rare and fragile books (which, apparently, Spock liked too). Leonard was on his way back from treating the broken ankle of one of the workman trying to set glass in the new arboretum (because the gardens weren't enough for the overachieving phantom of the north wing). The sweet smell of the alien flowers filled the warm air, which Leonard found bizarre since it was late October back on Earth.

"Spock." he replied "Where's your shadow gotten off to today?"

One of Spock's slanted eyebrows lifted.

"Jane."

"Ah. She located a set of stairs behind a bookcase in the library and decided to investigate." he glanced at the med kit in Leonard's hands.

"I am forced to question the experience level of the construction team."

"It's not their fault the Admiral decided he wanted a five story room of glass." Leonard said, rather than 'you and me both.'

Spock looked like he wanted to agree, but refrained.

Bones never got to meet him last time around, too busy in required seminars before his next mission, so getting to know him had been a strange mixture of seeing into Jim's bizarre preferences and meeting a local celebrity. Which was to say, nothing like expected. It mystified him how the two of them ever worked together and yet at the same time, it made a strange sort of sense. Every now and again Spock would display a penchant for the same absurdity Jim was so fond of committing. It seemed like just a little encouragement would have him tilting at windmills as bad as the Admiral and leave Leonard with all the more to patch up in the end.

Bad influence, thy name is Jim Kirk.

Spock had taken to staring up at the fourth floor in the silence as if, if he stared hard enough, he would be able to see through the walls to the face of his mysterious benefactor. Then, with the kind of blankness that came before moments of great peril, he said "Jane is on the roof."

The discovery was just in time for both of them to see one of the loose shingles lose its fight with gravity. Specifically, the shingle under Jane's right foot.

With a cry that turned Bones' blood to ice, Jane lost her footing and tumbled down the steep incline of the old roof towards the quickly-approaching edge. Spock broke into a run in the same moment Leonard did, seconds before she would to lose contact with the building entirely. She reached the edge before either was close enough to have a chance at catching her - and wrapped one tiny fist around the rain gutter as she passed it. It groaned under her weight and for another heart-stopping second she fell as the first two supports gave out. Then she hung, suspended forty feet in the air by nothing but an ancient gutter and her hopefully vulcan-inherited grip.

"Jane!" Spock called when they came to a stop just beneath her. Leonard had to shield his eyes from the sun to make her out.

"Daddy!" She called back weakly.

"Jane, you must remain calm. Hold on as tight as you can until I tell you otherwise."

One of the maids came out and Bones barked for her to get at least four people and a thick sheet. Spock sounded calm, but Leonard had never seen him so pale or tense in their acquaintance. Not that he could blame him, seeing as he was about to have a heart attack himself.

The gutter let out an ominous creak. Another support snapped and Jane shrieked as she dropped again, leaving just one support anchoring the gutter to the eves before the end of the segment.

"Doctor." Spock said, very, very quietly "Ready your surgery."

Leonard felt sick. Just then, the window on the fourth floor nearest Jane slammed open.

Jane had inconveniently fallen at the inside corner of one of the wings, leaving her out of reach when Jim swung himself out to try and get to her.

Leonard heard his lips treacherously form the words "Oh thank god." at the sight of him.

Leonard only knew it was Jim because he was the only one in the house crazy enough to hang out a fourth-floor window supported by nothing but his own hand on the top of the frame - the sun hung just right behind him so Leonard couldn't so much as see his hair color.

"Jane!" Jim's voice rang out clear as a bell "Reach for my hand!"

Jane, who had been steadfastly clinging to the gutter, hesitated.

Leonard thought he heard Jim say "It'll be alright, trust me."

Reluctantly, Jane reached. She wasn't quite big enough to bridge the gap. Jim leaned even further out; his feet dangerously close to the edge of the sill, his left hand grasping the frame by his fingertips. A familiar crack split the air just as the maids ran out with the sheet.

Spock darted forward and Leonard shouted wordlessly, but a second later they both stopped. In the instant the gutter support failed, Jim caught Jane's hand in his and swung her into his arms. They both tumbled back inside, leaving the party below soaking in adrenaline and relief.

Jim clung as tightly to Jane as he dared for a moment after they were both safely inside, and she didn't seem inclined to unlatch her fingers from his shirt any time that century. Then he pushed her back with wild panic still clawing at his heart.

"What were you doing up there? You could have died!" he barked, too much Captain in his voice, but he didn't have the presence of mind to censor it.

To her credit Jane didn't seem overly frightened by this. She flinched and tucked her chin against her chest at the accusation, though, trembling from head to toe as she had been since he got ahold of her.

"I didn't mean to fall. I just wanted to see the starships." she mumbled. And sniffed.

Jim deflated with comical speed.

"The starships." he repeated, trying to maintain some of his tough tone. He suspected he failed. Jim let out all the breath he'd been holding since he heard her tumbling off the roof and sat from his crouch.

"I think I remember doing something like that when I was a boy." he muttered.

Jane peaked up at him.

"You do?"

"Yes. My father used to come here for political events, and I'd climb to the roof to watch the starships take off from the base."

"You didn't fall." Jane seemed more ashamed by the contrast than the fact that she had almost died a few minutes earlier.

"The house was in much better shape at the time." Jim said with a shrug

"You...like starships?"

She nodded, but didn't explain further. Jim could feel his heart rate steadying out, finally.

"Any in particular or just all starships?"

Jane propped her head up on her knees and looked at him, considering. He had the feeling he was being tested.

"Constitution-class."

My god, Jim thought, warming with affection, I wouldn't have needed the DNA proof.

"But the constellation-class is supposed to be much more powerful." he said, smiling when she made a face.

"The constellations have too much extra equipment. Constitution class was built just to explore. They're better."

Jim's smile turned into a grin "That they are." he said, wondering where the Enterprise was right then, but worried he knew. "I had one, once."

Suddenly all trace of nerves dropped away from Jane's demeanor. Her eyes went wide as saucers, sparking with excitement.

"You did?"

"Oh, yes. For almost ten years, in fact. You're right, much better suited for deep space exploration. The constellations are bound to be sent on milk runs more often."

"Did you find anything new?"

Jim laughed a bit "I think a better question would be 'did we find anything familiar,' though when you're out there, you start to see similarities in almost everything."

Pounding footsteps echoed from down the corridor and Jim hopped to his feet "That's my que to go. Try watching the ships from the third floor balcony in the east wing - at least until I get something done about that roof."

Leonard dropped beside Jane, juggling his tricorder and med kit with hands steady only through extensive training. Spock was already there, gripping her shoulders with eyes just a tad too wide and saying something about being more careful and, hopefully, not doing damn fool things like climbing onto the roof unsupervised.

"I'm sorry father." Jane said, but Leonard had been a father himself long enough to recognize an insincere apology when he heard one.

"Jane." Spock stressed, trying to drag her attention away from whatever had captured it so completely down the hall.

She finally looked at him, and, horror of horrors, one of Jim's trademark grins flickered over her lips.

"I'm fine, father. The Admiral caught me - did you know he used to be Captain of a starship!?"

Leonard snapped his tricorder shut while Spock blinked several times in quick succession, probably at the dysphoric picture she made.

"Well, she's right that she's physically fine. Unfortunately, I've seen this particular kind of insanity before, and I'm afraid it's chronic."

There were workmen on the roof. Spock had abandoned his reading to frown at them in confusion several times over the course of the afternoon. Now that their project was beginning to take shape, his confusion had taken a different form. At first he had assumed they were fixing the decaying shingles - which they were, to some extent. Primarily, though, they seemed to be building an observation deck. On the apex of the roof.

It was a remarkable feat of engineering, if absolutely ridiculous.

"Apparently it's-" Doctor McCoy had held both of his hands up, index and middle fingers extended, and bent them to his words "'The best spot to observe from'".

Since everyone in the house either seemed exasperated or strangely touched, Spock assumed that 1) he was not the only one to find the addition to the mansion absurd and 2) the Admiral behaved this way regularly enough that no one in his service thought it concerning.

He was still considering what that might mean when Jane wandered into the garden.

"Father." she greeted, carrying a paperback copy of Peter Pan. She sat on the bench beside him, following his gaze to the roof before trying to hide her smile behind the covers of her novel.

"He is a strange man." Spock muttered, lifting his own book back to his eyes. He was distracted, and it slowed his progress through War and Peace considerably.

After a silence, Jane giggled. Spock glanced over to see a winged creature of unknown origins resting on the binding of her book. He was certain it, like the rest of the garden, wasn't poisonous, and returned to his own novel. After another peaceful stretch of time, Jane spoke up.

"Father." Jane had stopped smiling, her eyebrows drawn together in thought. The moth-like creature had settled in to stay, but she seemed unconcerned about it now.

"Yes?"

"Are you happy here?"

"As I follow the teachings of Surak, I would not call it happiness. I am reasonably at peace," where the Admiral is not concerned, he didn't add.

Jane considered this.

"Is that why you don't smile?"

Ah. Somehow, he realized, he should have expected this much sooner. He set his book down on his lap.

"Indeed it is."

Jane looked to the roof, watching the contractors work.

"Should I not smile?"

Spock turned to watch them as well, finding it almost meditative to do so.

"Someone once asked me why I would try to fit into just one world when I could be the best of both." He began. He imagined Jim, smiling the way he did when he was too perceptive for his own good, and let it embolden him just a bit.

"I was directed to choose between the ways of the humans and the ways of the vulcans when I was about your age. Many believed they were incompatible. You could not have one and the other."

He looked back to Jane, who was watching him now from behind the green edge of her novel.

"And yet we exist, some undeniable combination of the two. Children of both worlds, with the flaws and benefits of each. We must decide for ourselves where in between we fall and what of our heritage we follow."

Carefully, he pushed her lengthening hair back over one of her ears. He had taught her to hide them, to appear as human as possible for her own protection. Now, sitting unharassed in a lovely garden which the staff seemed to think was just for them, it seemed cruel to have done so.

He allowed the faintest of smiles to show on his face and Jane's eyes widened slightly.

"I do not want you to choose, Jane. It is my sincerest wish that you will, in fact, try to take the best of both worlds without shame."

He let the words hang in the air and, when Jane seemed lost in thought, returned to reading.

Eventually she broke the silence.

"I'm happy here."