— Chapter Eight—
— Karfaya —
And Spock…
… Spock fell just that little bit more in love with him—
—he fell to his knees before he could catch himself.
Keeled over in the snow, legs tangled and arms buckling, Spock vomited again with a gasping, choking wheeze of pain. Nothing came up but stomach acid, but his body tried still, wrenching itself apart to further try to purge. His ribs, his side, his head... his head felt blinding, and he could not focus, he could not think, he could not do anything other than whimper and heave and gag into the ever-falling snow. His mind radiated pain throughout him like a wildfire spreading, his muscles spasming and contracting even as he fought not to fall into his own emesis. This was unendurable, and he could not make it stop…
Stop this.
Please stop…
Someone was screaming through the howl of the wind, and it was only after the sound cut off while he retched again that he realized it had been himself. His face was wet. He was crying; tears dripped off his cheeks from both the vomiting and the memory.
The memory that the Seskille had forced him to—that they had ripped from his mind.
Spock remembered that evening in Jim's quarters. The emotions. The feelings. That warm, tender word that he dared not name aloud for fear of it consuming him. He thought of that night often and thought of it well; it always lay in the back of his mind in some way or another. The night where he realized that he—but it was tainted now. Tainted because he had been wrongly forced to feel it all over again, while his body heaved and froze to death and bled out on some empty, lifeless planet. Alone, cold, in pain. The sudden shock of it was more than he could stand.
It left his mind hollow and howling from the impact. To feel and not feel; to have such radiant emotion pressed on him and torn away just as swiftly. Slammed with overwhelming feeling only for it to be so violently gone with the next breath. The damage was beyond him to compensate for; he could not rationalize around it. He could not minimize it or undo it. There was no gradual buildup, no natural progression of the emotions as they occurred in daily life. No gentle swell of it. It was and then it was not; pressed onto his mind and then torn away. They hit him like a high-speed collision and sent him reeling and ruined.
No one should have to endure that; he should not have to endure that.
Spock could see nothing but white as he staggered back to his knees, back to his feet—his broken ankle hobbled him, but he forced his weight on it anyways. If it hurt, he could not tell. He couldn't feel his body any longer, not over the ripping, wrenching sensation of his controls fraying at the seams. All those vulnerabilities he'd allowed to fester in his mind like an open wound had finally rotted through the walls of his self-discipline, and he felt each and every minute erosion of it. His quiet, calm dunes of sand were spilling and pouring out, exposing all that he fought so hard to bury down for so many years.
And still they reached for more.
He stumbled only once as he lurched forward on frozen legs, but he would have dragged himself across the land by his fingertips if it got him to shelter that much sooner. A roof and walls would not stop the pain, and it would not stop the violation, but he would have a better chance of bearing it there than bearing it while also being exposed to the elements. Once he stopped moving, he would be able to focus his attention inward to try to repair something of the damage there.
He hoped, although hoping was not something a Vulcan should have done, that when the captain found him, he still had a mind left. That he still had control, because he could not be trusted around Jim if he did not.
Spock knew what happened when he lost control.
It could not happen again.
Please stop this.
That pressure shoved again, and again, and again. It pressed into where it ripped at, sought all the cracks it had created, seeping in like water through a crevice. A drip, a trickle, a—
—water trickled down his face from his drenched hair, and he had to squint to see where he was going through the rain. It was a downpour now, flooding the streets to his ankles. An apparently normal occurrence on Giri-Y9-N, but it made him uncomfortable. The rain was warm and unpleasantly slick in texture, sticking to him like a film. More akin to an oil than the usual common standard of water found on most planets. The air was humid and tropical in climate, making Spock feel as if he were in a heavy, damp sauna. His uniform clung oddly and chaffed at his skin, just as soaked as the rest of him was.
Captain Pike huffed a breath of laughter when he saw him, and even Number One's lips twitched, although her expression remained impressively stoic otherwise. They had both been able to remain indoors for the study, while Spock had bravely ventured out for a more detailed analysis. He was embarrassed at his curiosity now, a flush of heat at the base of his neck spreading up to his ears. He felt undignified as he dripped all over the floor.
"Don't think I don't appreciate the dedication to duty, Ensign, but you're soaked through to the bone." Pike was already ushering him into the roofed shelter of the foyer, a hand hovering at his back without touching him. "Like a wet cat. Come here, son, let's go find you a towel..."—
—desperation drove Spock, propelling him forward through the snow even as he listed to the side and nearly keeled over. Some horrible, guttural noise was being dragged from his throat; he heard it on the wind but could not stop making those sounds. He was weaving erratically, left and right with a dizzying blur of motion; so much so that Spock had to close his eyes against the desire to be sick again. His head, the weight pressing on him there. He could not concentrate through it. There was no steady direction he could keep, no sense of ability to path his way to the ruins now; he could only go forward with an outstretched hand and hope he was going in the right—
"—direction," Spock said as he looked through his viewfinder. The bridge was calm today, the low conversations of his crewmates washing over him comfortably. He had once found the sound distracting and intrusive when he'd first taken a starship posting, and yet now he felt strange when working without it. Silence had its own appeal, but he found it had no place on the bridge. Alpha shift had worked together for years now, and the routine conversation and humming chatter of the crew provided him an easy background noise to work in. With his vision so intently focused among the fields of stars and nebulas, there was a certain appeal in hearing signs of life at his back. Something to call him back to the ship. It felt stabilizing in a way he could not quite define.
The captain stepped up to his side and, although he was not touching him, Spock felt the heat of him all the same. His focus shifted abruptly, splitting to accommodate both his work and his awareness of Jim. It was instinct now; he could not have stopped it if he tried. As always, his senses centered in on that one specific human. Where he was, what he was doing, whether he was safe.
"Oh, believe me, I do. You've more than earned it ten-fold," the captain replied, clapping a gentle hand onto his shoulder. "You just point us in the right direction, Mr. Spock, and we'll follow your lead. I trust you."
Spock looked up from his viewfinder to see Kirk leaning against his instrument panel, just as familiar a spot to the man by now as the captain's chair was. Sometimes, he thought Jim might spend more time here beside him than in his actual proper station. Every so often—and with increased frequency, he couldn't help but notice—the captain would wander over and perch there, just as he was doing now. Spock did not find this unpleasant, not at all, but it was a—
—distraction, or he thought he might break down. It was not logical, but Spock was apparently not able to be logical due to the unnatural mistake of his birth. His lessons at the center had been difficult today and he had not achieved that which seemed to come so instinctively to the other students. His meditation had been erratic, his expressions had been visible, and his hands had balled into fists at the pointed comments of his peers. All shameful displayed of emotionalism. This had invited even more comments about the fault of his conception and how he was, in every way, deficient. He'd stared straight ahead, trembling, but had offered no rebuttal. There was none that he could have made anyways. What they said was not untrue, or they would not have said it to begin with. One classmate's comments could be explained away as casual cruelty, but not comments from all of them.
"Spock," Father said, looking up from where he had been conversing with Mother softly in the parlor. His mother appeared to grow concerned as she looked him over, her human eyes seeing far too much. He did not meet her gaze, nor so much as looked at his father. "You are home twenty-point-two-three-seven minutes later than customary."
"Yes," Spock said stiffly, advancing past the doorway but elaborating no further on the reason for his tardiness. Instead, he moved to the staircase and took them swiftly, climbing hurriedly towards his bedroom.
He needed a distraction; something to focus on because his emotions were too close to the surface. His lip still bled from where he had bitten it to prevent it from quivering. His throat had been tight and his eyes stinging the entire walk home from the center. He did not have the self-control to prevent an emotional outburst for much longer. Already, his breath was hitching alarmingly. Spock did not understand why it was that he had these impulses at all, or why they should overwhelm him so. He was already six-years of age, he should have had the self-regulation necessary to prevent this. Instead, he felt only chaos inside.
The moment his bedroom door closed behind him, safely blocking out the rest of the world, Spock felt the irrational tears start to well up in his eyes. Something gasping in his chest burst forth, and he covered his face with his hands as his cheeks grew wet. It was purposeless, this shedding of tears. It dehydrated the body and did nothing to change his circumstances. Tears did not take back the comments of his peers. They did not undo the flaw that was himself. And yet, he could not stop them no matter how he tried; they rapidly spilled over and dripped down his face in streams. This was not befitting a Vulcan. Yet apparently, he was not and could never truly be Vulcan.
Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.
Something wet pressed against his ear. Hot breath huffed at him. Spock looked over at I-Chaya, his sehlat appearing blurry through the moisture still falling from his eyes. The warm nose pressed into him again with a great whuffing sound, and Spock felt his expression crumple. With a choked, desperate sound, he reached out and buried his face into the sehlat's neck, small fingers gripping tight to the thick fur. Strangled cries burst from him as he leaned against I-Chaya and sobbed—
—there was a harsh jolt through his arm as it slammed into something solid.
Spock squinted against the light, against the vertigo and the tears in his eyes, as he scraped his hands over the snow-covered rock. Smooth stone, rounded and sandblasted from millennia of exposure to the elements, had never been so relieving a sight. He could not see enough of it to tell whether this was one of the old ruins he'd been looking for, or whether he had mistakenly doubled back to the cliffside. Both would feel the same to his senses, numb and crippled as they were. He leaned against the stone and followed the cold rock with a hand he could not feel, limping heavily as he waded through the knee-deep snow. If it was shelter, he would eventually find an entrance. If it were the cliffside, he would eventually freeze to death.
His ankle gave out twice as he moved; Spock could feel the bones grating together there, and the rattling in his chest grated in his throat now too. He could not draw in a proper breath. Something dripped from his face, and he could not tell whether they were tears, blood, or both.
And still, the Seskille reached for him. That joy they felt as they pried his memories from his mind, ripping at each thought. They were so happy to take him apart for their own pleasure…
The nausea overtook him again; Spock doubled over to dry-heave, ribs shrieking their protest as each gasp was wrenched from him. He felt brutalized; every inch either injured, agonized, or frozen, and some all three. Harsh wheezes were sucked in, only to be violently expelled with a strangled hacking. These sounds should not come from Vulcans; they surely should not come from him. But he couldn't stop them either; he could only grope for the entrance to the building, blindly—
—through the blind darkness, came the sense of touch. There were warm hands gripping his shoulders in a firm, almost bruising hold. "I don't care, Spock!" Kirk's voice snapped out through the darkness. "I don't care if you give me fifty of them—a hundred! I don't care if you call up Starfleet Command right now and scream it at them! I'm not accepting it, you hear?!"
Spock tried to reason with Kirk, hands at his back in parade rest and his posture rigid. Even though he could not see the captain's expression, he knew how it would look. Agitated, upset, angry. Spock longed to relieve him of that, but in truth he rather felt the same. It was all he could do to stop his own feelings from showing, to keep his own despair from being evident. He did not want to leave the ship. He did not want to leave the captain. Jim was only making this worse, and it was difficult enough already. "It is the only logical course of action, sir. I am unable to perform my duties in my condition, and Starfleet does not allow—"
"I don't give a damn what they allow! This is my ship, and you are my first officer! You are staying my first officer, whether you like it or not! That's an order, Mr. Spock!" Jim sounded desperate and, startlingly, choked up. His brother was dead, his sister-in-law was dead, his newly orphaned nephew lay unconscious in sickbay, and now his first officer and closest friend was prepared to leave Starfleet altogether. They were not enviable circumstances, and he did not blame Jim for his reaction. The anger was misplaced, but it was understandable.
Spock could only nod his silent agreement, even knowing that it would make no difference. The captain might not accept his resignation, but Starfleet would ensure it happened all the same—
—he was sprawled in the snow, hands clapped to his ears as if it would somehow hold his defenses together for a short while longer. Low, keening sounds escaped him and were lost into the howling wind. His nose was bleeding; he could taste it where it dripped into his mouth. Stop, he wanted to beg the Seskille—would have if he knew how to make them listen. Please stop this. He could not bear anymore; his body had been pressed beyond its limit and he could not fight it further. Spock wondered if dying by way of exposure might now instead be a mercy. Some selfish, human part of himself hoped he did, so that they could not steal anything else from his mind. So they could not violate him further…
He could not tell whether he was lightheaded from the pain, from the nausea, from the concussion, or from the blood loss. Perhaps all four. Spock's hand still clamped against his side as often as he could manage to try to apply pressure, but he also needed the stability of both arms to move through the snow. The vague sensations that were his hands followed stone, and he was truly dragging himself now. He needed to find shelter, so that he would not perish from hypothermia. He needed to triage himself, so he would not die of blood loss or blunt trauma. He needed this to end…
His hand fell forward as it hit air and then into rock.
Bare, dry, snow-free rock.
Spock wasted little time, pulling himself through the opening in the structure with a choked grunt of exertion. At once, the moaning of the wind in his ears grew muted, and the heavy snowfall on him was blocked by the roof. The relief at making it to shelter, at being out of the worst of the weather, was so gratifying that it stole his breath from him. It helped him press back the reaching, grasping presence in his head. The cracks in his mind were not sealed, but he held himself against them with firmer support now that he had some measure of safety.
For a moment, all he could do was sprawl out there in the entryway and gasp in strangles of air. Every muscle went limp, and he had to fight to remain conscious. His mind drifted from him, surroundings distant and fading. His pulse was deafening in his ear, heart thundering from the adrenaline and stress. It was only after feeling the increasing pain in his ribs from laying on them that he became aware of himself again.
Spock grit his jaw to muffle any pained sounds that might emerge, trying to cling to some shred of dignity. He failed at it. Choked whimpers escaped as he dragged himself further into the shelter, away from the openings in the rock. The ruined building was dim as he peered at it with pain-narrowed eyes; this room had only one exterior entrance and one window-like hole, and it was darker even still in the next room over. He slowly pulled and huddled himself into what might have once been a closet or storage area; it was small and dark, and felt soothing to his eyes after so long outside in the blinding snow. While there was no door to block out the light, Spock curled into the corner to provide some relief from the brightness.
There, finally, he was able to slump against the rock floor and rest.
For long seconds, time moving immeasurably, he could only breathe in and out in ragged heaves, each one sending an exhausting ache through his chest. Black spots filled his vision as it narrowed and tunneled but closing them offered no relief either; it only gave the sensation that the world was spinning and tilting around him violently. It took some couple of minutes until he was able to unclench his jaw and remember that his responsibilities had not yet ended. Coming back to himself was harder than it should have been. All he wanted to do was go unconscious.
He could not afford to yet.
Triage was not difficult. He had more than one injury, but Spock considered some to be less important than others. His broken ankle was ranked lowest priority. He would be unable to move from this location again, lacking both the energy and ability to do either, and so would remain in this room until help arrived. One did not need functioning legs to sit and wait. His ribs were excruciating as they constricted him, but he did not judge them to be in danger of puncturing his lungs and were not currently vital to attend to. If that were to change, he would reevaluate his priorities. Until that time came, he could do little for them.
There were only two truly immediate concerns. The concussion, as it inhibited his ability to think logically and formulate a proper response to crisis, and the puncture wound in his left side. Upon waking, he had felt the concussion slow his reaction time down, cause disorientation, and dull his ability to focus. Even now it was affecting him; the nausea he felt did not stem solely from the assault to his mind. Short of a medical kit, however, there was not much he could do about the head injury. He had no scanner, no bandages, no gauze with which to provide first aid. He could do nothing but stem the blood with his sleeve, and he needed his hands for other uses.
This left only the wound in his abdomen.
With trembling, numb fingers, Spock peeled up the hem of his uniform shirt to inspect the area, the fabric half-frozen to his skin and stained a deep green. It took a moment to focus in on the wound; his eyesight faded in and out in a strange throbbing fashion. The injury was serious, but he did not think it was immediately life-threatening on its own. There were shards of the tricorder sticking out of the puncture site; he even recognized some of the larger ones, such as the pieces of the hinged compartment, and fragments of the display screens. The wound was bleeding still, oozing slowly, and he reluctantly lowered his shirt once more.
To remove the debris would worsen the problem, and applying pressure to the area would only push the fragments further in; he had already done this when trying to find shelter. They had not yet pierced through any organs, but they would if he further jostled them too much. He had to leave them be until further medical attention arrived. However, one piece had either already been pressed beneath the skin or fallen out sometime during his hunt for shelter—his fingers could not accurately probe the area to tell for certain either way—and the bleeding there was not stopping. This he could not ignore.
Bunching the fabric of his shirt as best he could, he applied pressure firmly to the area, carefully navigating around the remains of the other shards. Blood blossomed beneath his fingers, wetting down the uniform and thawing the ice that had started to form. Spock couldn't hold in the sound that escaped at the sensation of the other fragments shifting; not being pushed deeper into him but instead to the side, ripping at the skin with their sharp edges. Doctor McCoy would be upset with him, but at least he would be alive to give reason for the ire. A fair trade. Spock thought he would accept any number of unpleasant reactions from the doctor if it meant he could be far, far away from this planet. He invited them, even, as long as they were given in the safety of the ship.
Spock pressed his lips together firmly, to try to block out the nausea and prevent himself from vomiting again. He felt sick; dizziness and vertigo threatened to empty him out again, and his head lolled down against his chest limply. The pressure in his head was splitting, but he had to resist—fight it!—because the alternative was simply not acceptable.
Please stop. I beg of you, please stop this.
Did they not understand? This was killing him.
Having done as much as he was capable of, Spock laid against the rock of the wall behind him. His lips were cracked and split from the wind; they bled down his chin to mix with the blood from his nose and head. He mopped his face up as best he could with the edge of his sleeve—a disgusting use of his uniform, but the only other option was allowing the stomach acid and blood to freeze to his skin. There were no expendable items of fabric he could use as a bandage or clean cloth, and his Science blues were already a loss due to the damage and staining. The only equipment he had on him were the remaining shards of the tricorder jutting out of his abdomen and the clothing he wore.
Blearily, he struggled to remember all his survival training.
It was harder than it should have been. His perfect recollection was distorted and fragmented from the head injury, from the attack on his mind, from the cold. Inexcusable, as it should have come immediately to him and with swift ease. Hypothermia could explain some of the lethargy, but he was a Vulcan, and he should have been able to last longer in extreme conditions. That he had not was unforgivable. However, even he could admit his circumstances had crossed the threshold of what anyone would call extreme by now. Perhaps another Vulcan would have been just as compromised a state, but he did not think that to be true.
Spock had been injured before, but he had also been able to ignore the pain by use of his mental controls. He could not do so now; those very controls were failing him. He could not focus his mind on regulating his pain response when so much of his energy was aimed on defending his mind itself.
Spock, sitting there in the cold silence, found he could no longer put off what he'd dreaded since waking. There was no excuse of physical exertion to distract himself with. No shelter he needed to try to reach. One battle had been won, and now he needed to contend with the other he'd been so far ignoring. He would do his best to moderate his response to what he would find there, Spock told himself firmly. No emotional reaction. No fit of panic. Just logical evaluation. He would repair what he could, and the rest would have to wait until a time he could safely and securely break down.
Yet he was afraid of what he would find. Fear was not helpful in this case, but he felt it all the same. He could not stop the emotion from gripping at him, no matter how desperately he tried. It was a familiar feeling, to be afraid of himself; to be afraid of his own self-control failing him. Perhaps his greatest fear. He knew what happened when it did, and he was right to be wary of it. But it was not helpful to focus on that, and he was now delaying what he knew he must do. Ignorance of his own barriers would protect no one from it should they fall.
With eyes closed, Spock finally allowed his awareness to center towards his mind.
What was left of it.
He could not stop himself from recoiling in horror at the sheer carnage he found there, flinching back even physically at the true scope of the damage. His promise to temper his emotions failed. Words failed. Whereas his barriers had once been rigid and unyielding, they were now crumbling. Broken down to rubble like a stone fortress under siege. All those thoughts Spock had allowed to remain surfaced, all those open wounds he'd been unable to confront and accept, all had been ravaged apart, leaving dangerous cracks in his normally strong control. Cracks that were starting to bleed as much as his side was.
He… did not know how to fix this. The emotions he buried beneath the sand were being uncovered, despite his best attempts to keep them concealed. To keep them suppressed firmly down where they could not affect him. They were, even now, rising out and taking hold of him. Dread, sickening and cold, washed over him. Fear. He was so afraid. The sand of his endless dunes trickled out of his walls like an hourglass.
There was a crippling, overwhelming presence waiting there to scoop it up.
He had been aware of it the entire time, but now it was to the exclusion of all else. It felt so strongly, so deeply, and it threatened to rush over him too, drowning him the radiant delight it felt. He was not alone in his own head; there was someone else there, so many of them, and this thought struck him like a blow. They had invaded his mind, forcibly. Someone had violated him in a way he could not have fathomed—was still violating him even as he watched that foreign, invading presence claw to reach him.
The Seskille. Desecrating every thought with their groping awareness, and all they felt was joy at the act of doing so. It was their happiness. They bludgeoned against the previously impenetrable shielding, the one he'd worked at his entire life, until they could reach through the crack they made and rip something out.
Feeling only pure delight, they eagerly grabbed for his memories again.
Spock had been distracted by the damage; horrified at the mutilation he had found. His mind spun and the pressure fit to burst him open. He was too slow, just in that split second, to recoil away from that clutching desire.
A split second was all it took.
Something in him shattered, the walls failing and collapsing down and spilling sand. That throbbing, spiking agony in his head rendered all defense meaningless. They tore through his mind like a spear with each grab they made; they did not stop when he tried to pull away from them. There was no where further for him to go.
Stop. Please, do not do this.
Stop…
Distantly, he was aware that he was retching again, hands scrambling to keep himself upright. Someone was screaming. His throat burned from the force of it. His mind gave way, collapsing inwards on itself. He needed the pain to stop; the blinding, crippling pain filling his head with splitting pressure—
—they stood side-by-side, staring out at the blackness of space and the streaked pinprick of stars that flew past. It was a place he often found the captain after a mission had gone unfavorably; an out-of-the-way observation deck that few ever visited, preferring the more spacious and comfortable viewing areas three decks above. The solitude of the room made it particularly appealing to Jim when he was upset. It was for that very reason that Spock checked on it frequently and included the deck in his normal post-mission rounds. He'd caught Jim here more than once, brooding and depressed. Although Spock could not change the emotions that overwhelmed his captain, he could change the conditions he expressed those emotions in. Specifically, with company.
Jim's reflection met his eyes, and perhaps it was that neither of them were truly looking at the other that allowed for the rare moment of open vulnerability. With the smallest shake to his voice, Jim murmured softly: "You know, sometimes I worry the pressure of it all is going to destroy me and leave nothing left. The Enterprise, she takes and takes, and I keep on giving. How long until I'm just an empty shell—
—"Here." Something wet, slimy, and cold pressed against his ear, the texture of it akin to mucus as it dripped down the side of his neck. Spock immediately withdrew from it with an ill-concealed flinch, a shudder of revulsion down his spine as it trickled beneath his uniform. Wiping the seaweed from the side of his face, he fixed Doctor McCoy with a particularly stony expression, taking three steps back to avoid further assault of his person.
Doctor McCoy looked less-than contrite and only waved a large, empty orange snail shell at him. Spock raised an eyebrow, utterly perplexed at both the action itself as well as the forceful nature with which he gestured. Did the doctor want him to take it? Jim laughed at them a few feet away, wading through the tidal pools with his boots and socks tucked under one arm.
"The empty shell of a meacyte snail," Spock stated uncertainly, although he suspected that the doctor was not asking for clarification on the species. "No thank you."
"What, you telling me you've never pressed your ear to a seashell before? You can hear the ocean in 'em."
Spock blinked, and then blinked again. His other eyebrow joined the first, incredulously.
"That… is illogical, Doctor." Spock was not certain where to even start with that comment. He had the passing thought that he was being teased, and the look in McCoy's eye gave credence to the theory. Nevertheless. "—and thoroughly impossible. Mollusc shells cannot and do not emit their own sound. Neither can the meacyte snail itself, assuming it were still within the shell. What you are hearing is undoubtedly the result of your present surroundings. To clarify, should it have somehow escaped your notice, we are currently at the ocean."—
—he had never seen the ocean before, not once in all his four years of life, and Spock found it was not as impressive an experience as he'd thought it would be. What little of the bay he could see was colored a deep shade of grey-blue, dotted with small shapes of boats in the water. The heavy fog in the air obscured the majority of the ocean itself and made any further visibility difficult.
He peered at it with narrowed eyes, attempting to see the larger ships through the mist, but all he saw was dense sheets of grey. It felt as if the clouds themselves were swallowing him, consuming him and everything else around him. Spock edged away from the railing with an unsettled feeling in his stomach.
"We'll have to come back later in the day; I forgot that it gets so foggy in the morning." His mother raised a hand and smoothed back his fog-damp hair, tucking him firmly into her side. Spock was content to stay close to her; she was both warm and safe. The Golden Gate Bridge was slick from condensation, and he had almost tripped once already on the pedestrian path. The thought of falling from the height and being lost in the mist below them made him increasingly nervous. "Maybe your father will be able to join us this time."
Spock did not think that would be likely; his father had expressed very little interest in sightseeing and had suggested that Spock apply himself to more educational pursuits on Earth instead of recreational ones. His mother had not followed this suggestion. Spock was of a torn opinion on the matter. It was important to understand his mother's planet, as it played home to half of his heritage, but this had not been a particularly pleasant trip and it made him feel. Nervousness, uncertainty, trepidation; he did not like the cold, wet mist or the water that surrounded them on all sides. It made him afraid, and he knew that he should not have been capable of the emotion at all, let alone of displaying it visibly as he was currently doing.
He was glad that his Father had not joined them to see his flawed, illogical reaction. He would have been just as disappointed in Spock as Spock was in himself. Although surrounded by humans on all sides, each expressing their emotions in shockingly open ways, his own standards were to be of control. He was a Vulcan—
—"It is flawed to continue to persevere towards an unachievable objective. You are not fully Vulcan, Spock, and no expended effort or attempt will result in you being one. It is a biological fact that you are half-human, and therefore it is illogical to continue trying to achieve that which is not achievable."
Spock opened his eyes and glanced at his classmate impassively. This was nothing he had not heard before; he did not react to the taunting outwardly. It was commonplace be confronted with such words from his peers, and displaying a reaction only fed into their continued comments about his heritage. Now, nearly in his tenth year of life, he had learned not to provide them with further cause with which to degrade him for. And yet, he was hurt. No matter how many times he heard this and variations of it, some hurt, human part of him wanted to run into the desert and never return.
"Is it not also illogical, Sk'tav, to interrupt my studies when you should be focused on your own?" Spock asked tonelessly. His nails dug deeply into his palms, safely concealed beneath the sleeves of his robes, and he felt the sting of them breaking skin. Blood welled up. "I would advise you to return to your own meditation, so that I may continue on with mine."—
—his meditation space was personal; filled with items that centered his thoughts and his thoughts only. Each Vulcan took great care in deciding what focusing objects resonated best with the unique structure of their mind, and it was a deeply personal matter to discuss the meaning of them with another. It was considered intimate even, reserved for only one's spouse or closest family. Still, as he watched the captain approach the looming statue of the Yon'tislak, the griffin-like fire beast from Vulcan mythology, he could not help but make an exception for this one particular human, as he always seemed to do.
Spock carefully explained the symbolism of the creature in even tones, and why he had chosen the Yon'tislak specifically. The captain would not understand the true significance of the discussion; he was not Vulcan. He would not understand how deeply Spock regarded him.
"Sometimes I envy you," Jim said, smiling over at him and tracing the severe features of the statue. The asenoi, held in the hands of the stone fire beast, cast the glow of flames around the room. "The whole meditation thing, I mean. What I wouldn't give to shut my brain off sometimes. It gets very loud up here, from time to time. I've always wondered: how does it work, anyways? I thought it was just like clearing your mind, but the way you describe it, it sounds like quite a lot of work."
Spock opened his mouth to respond when Jim leapt back with a sudden yelp, his hand already blistering where a spark from the fire pot had burnt him—
—it happened in Lab Four. While working quietly in the empty room, a warm sensation stirred just beneath his stomach, like an ember breathing to life. Spock paused as he stared through the lens of the microscope, perplexed at the unfamiliar feeling and uncertain at the cause of it. He had consumed a standard meal, had an appropriate amount of hydration, and he could not feel any of the typical symptoms signifying an approaching illness. It was as if a small coal had sparked in him, shooting tiny tendrils of heat throughout his body. It started there below in his gut, but as he stood there silently, it began to spread.
And it grew hotter.
Spock endeavored to ignore it; he had his tasks to complete, and he would see them through to the best of his ability. While the strange sensation of it was distracting, it was not immediately pressing, and he could block it out with enough focus. Spock returned his gaze back to the bacteria squirming on the glass slide and pushed the feeling to the outskirts of his awareness; there but not prioritized. It was only after another 3.824 hours that the feeling began to grow truly uncomfortable, and approximately another hour after that that it began to grow painful.
His brow furrowed. Spock stood from his seat, collecting his samples and the beakers he'd removed them from. It was not an illness, that much he could tell; his thorough knowledge of his immune system and his internal monitoring of it gave no indication that he was sick. His body did not register this sensation as a foreign problem. There were no immediate alarms raised at the pain; his awareness of his physical makeup detected no foreign cause.
That was not to say, however, that his body was not reacting. It was. Adrenaline released in waves at the stimuli, preparing him for an action he could not define or identify. There was no cause for it, but parts of him were responding unusually, as if he were about to engage in sport or combat. His nervous system lit up; his blood vessels dilated, the resulting blood flow rushing to tensed muscles. His heartrate increased, as did his blood pressure. His hypothalamus and pituitary glands released what he could only describe as a cocktail of oxytocin and testosterone.
Some molten feeling curled in him, liquid and hot and sending an alarming shiver throughout the entirety of him. His veins blazed throughout his body, as if the blood in them had been replaced with magma, and his pulse raced faster, to the point where he could only feel a thrumming instead of individual beats. That frisson of sensation poured through him, low and coiled, slithering down-down-down to pool into his groin, where it…
He did not understand.
… And then he did.
The beaker slipped from suddenly slack fingers to shatter on the floor. His eyes wide with shock, he reached a trembling hand to steady himself against the shelf; he gripped it tightly enough to dent the metal. That tiny ember in him sparked to flame and Spock burned—
—inside. All he could feel was heat and fire, and it was almost more than he could bear, more than he could stand. He would not last much longer. Spock paced his quarters relentlessly, unable to rest or think or sit, because that churning need in him wouldn't allow for it. The dents in the wall, the smashed console on his desk, the overturned chair; all signs that he had lost control already. He could no longer be trusted to leave his rooms, could no longer be trusted to be around the crew, and he had locked the doors to all but the most stringent of override codes. Only two had the authority to do so.
Only one of them threatened to do it.
"Are you really going to make me use them, Spock? I will if I have to, but I'd prefer it not come to that."
Spock glanced desperately at the wall comm, jaw grit so tightly that he felt his teeth ache. His fists were clenched to the point of drawing blood and his legs throbbed from restlessly wandering his cabin. Over and over again, back and forth, until the sight of his own quarters were a nauseating blend of red and grey. His curtains half-hung from the walls where he'd ripped at them; his bed was unmade, and the blankets scattered. His microtapes littered the floor. The captain would see all the signs of the approaching plak'tow, the blood fever, and it would be shameful.
"Spock. Please."
And yet, hearing the gentle request, he found he could not refuse.
He'd never been able to refuse Jim anything.
Spock's voice croaked out a soft: "Open."
The captain entered without hesitation, allowing the door to slide closed behind him. His eyes took in the signs of violence around the room, but he said nothing about the damage or mess. His eyes widened for a brief moment before his expression smoothed and only the smallest signs of worry, carefully controlled behind a mask of neutrality, were visible at all. At least one of them had control, because Spock felt his own rapidly deteriorating.
"You weren't answering anyone, Mr. Spock. I was starting to get worried. Bones too, not that he'd ever admit it. He was about to lead the charge to break down the door, but I told him I'd try my way first." The captain smiled at Spock, and did he know what that smile did to him? Spock shoved his fists behind him in parade rest, a poor façade of poise, and gripped them together so tightly that blood dripped down his fingers. His entire body was shaking visibly, obvious even to a casual glance. Jim certainly noticed, but he did not address it. "We're approaching Vulcan; just another hour or so until we're in orbit."
Spock nodded, something unclenching in him. He was still afraid, terrified, but the worst of the anxiety was eased knowing that he would not have to take other, more desperate measures. He could not have allowed himself to hurt someone in this state, and as reaching Vulcan in time had been an increasingly distant hope, he'd been forced to consider other alternatives. There had been very few of them available, and each were more permanent than the last. For now, at least, he could last one more hour. He had to last one more hour.
"Thank you, Jim." It was with a steadier voice that he was able to finally reply. The knowledge that this would all be over soon allowed for some of his composure to return. His trembling did not stop, but it was reduced. He was able to unclench his hands. "I understand that this will have… severe ramifications with Starfleet, but I thank you all the same. That you would do this…"
"Oh, I think you'll find there is very little I wouldn't do for you, Spock, ramifications or not. You're my friend; my best friend. Your life is worth far more to me than a fancy starship or some rank braids ever will."
Jim took a step closer to him, and Spock re-tensed instantly. He bit his tongue now to keep from doing something he would regret, fingernails once more digging deep into the mangled flesh of his palms to control himself. His self-restraint was threadbare, and he was at dangerous risk of giving into that relentless need. Blood pooled in his mouth, swallowed thickly. The desire was there, the urge was there, to stalk forward; to pursue like some predatory animal until the captain's back hit the wall behind him, pinning him there. Caged in by Spock's arms as he pressed up against Jim, bodies flush, and grip—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.
"Kroykah!"
Spock stared, uncomprehending at first even as the horror set in bone deep. The burning, raging fire that had consumed and scorched him from the inside out extinguished suddenly and turned to cold ash in his veins. Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn't breathe, he didn't move, he just… stared. There was pressure in his eyes, vision blurring and stinging with the onset of tears, but he didn't cry—couldn't cry—he could only stand there and look and look and look and not truly see, not fully understand…
With the strangling hold of the ahn-woon wrapped tight around his neck and keeping him partially suspended, the captain hung bonelessly, slack limbs sprawled out against the sand. This body—this limp, beaten, lifeless thing, did not look like James T. Kirk, the fearless starship captain. It did not look like Jim, his closest friend. It looked wrong; sickening and impossible and perverse, because it should not have been possible. He couldn't have—he couldn't have…
… What had he done?
He didn't breathe, even as a guttural, choked sound caught in his throat. Couldn't breathe. Everything went so quiet, fingers numbing and slipping as he lowered the body—not Jim, not Jim—to the ground. Spock stared and stared, hunched over and still holding on as the shock gave way to chilling, overwhelming dread. Jim was—the world seemed to lurch and drop out from beneath him, leaving him unmoored and detached and disconnected to everything around him. Vulcan was gone. The spectators were gone. T'Pring was gone. The universe could have ended and been reborn a dozen times over and all he could know was that unmoving body that lay stretched out on the sand.
The gold of Jim's command uniform was ripped, bloody from the fight—their fight—their fight, because he did this—and his face looked beaten in. Bones broken; skin bruised, but unmistakably Jim Kirk. Jim, who was his closest friend. Jim, who meant more to him than any person ever had or ever would. Jim, who had risked his captaincy and his career to save his friend's life. Jim who had been killed—murdered—by that very same friend he'd given up everything for.
Jim, who was dead.
He did this. His weapons, his hands, his fault. That horrible burning, no longer immolating him from within, took root behind his eyes and in his throat. He felt choked, sickened, gutted, because this was his fault. His captain. His Jim. His fault…
"Get your hands off of him, Spock!"
The doctor was there, and the universe came rushing back to him. Time moved once more, reminding him that it had not ended, that it continued on even when it should not have, because Jim was dead. Dead. He could only stare, barely feeling McCoy grabbing the ahn-woon and wrestling it from his grip—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze.
"Kroykah!"
Spock stared, uncomprehending at first even as the horror set in bone deep. The burning, raging fire that had consumed and scorched him from the inside out extinguished suddenly and turned to cold ash in his veins. Something unpleasant, sick, and churning filled his gut, his chest, his throat; he didn't breathe, he didn't move—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything in Spock froze—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless, and everything—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—
—Jim dangled heavily from his grip, body limp and lifeless—
Thank you all for the reviews! Things are going to get pretty rough for Spock until they get better, but this is a Hurt/Comfort, and the comfort will be coming eventually. Jim's too stubborn and determined to allow for anything else!
As always, references of blindness are from the TOS episode 'Operation - Annihilate!'. If you're into Spock whump, it's a great one for it.
Feel free to find me on Discord: AlexPrime#5073
Vulcan:
K'oh-nar — The fear of emotional vulnerability and emotional /
Karfaya — Fragmentation; the act or process of breaking into fragmentsbr /
Asenoi — Fire Pot, used to center one's thoughts during /
Yon'tislak — Fire beast from a Vulcan children's tale, a hybrid-like creature similar to a griffinbr /
Plak'tow — Blood fever; the final part of Pon Farr whereby the victim is rendered /
Ahn-woon — Rope-like melee weapon to be used as a whip or noose in combat.