— Chapter Four —
— Samek-Tam'a —
"So," Kirk glanced over at him with a light nudge of his elbow. "Guess you were right about those volcanoes. No hot magma baths for us."
They had been walking for almost fifteen minutes, climbing steadily in elevation towards the crater nestled aside the outcropping of boulders and cliffs to the north. He kept close tabs on the rest of the landing party to the west and south respectively; even as he now glanced behind, eyes narrowed to see through the falling snow, they were little more than colorful pinpricks of red and blue against the open tundra. Within sight, for however long sight remained a possibility in the increasing weather conditions. Focusing his vision on them for too long made the pain behind his eyes spike, and so he kept track via his tricorder instead. It was not difficult; the landing party remained the only lifeform in scanning range.
"We would not be bathing in magma, sir. Magma resides beneath the planet's crust and is not commonly accessible," Spock recited factually, almost absently. He tested the air once more but the only scent on the wind was of ice and rock. No flowers, no unusual scents of any kind but what he expected there to be. "And although the presence of mountains suggests a certain amount of planetary seismic activity, I estimate the probability of advanced warning of emergent volcanic eruption to be significant enough, thus reducing magma to such a miniscule risk not worth mentioning."
The captain smiled at him.
"Well, at least we've got that going for us, and thank god for that, because nothing else seems to be going right! Looks like Bones won't be needing that burn paste after all." Kirk held out a hand to catch the increasing number of snowflakes falling from the sky as they walked; they melted upon contact with his much warmer skin. By now, it was falling steadily, and in thicker and faster quantities. The bare rock beneath them was already coated, making footfall potentially treacherous. Spock had to watch his step carefully to prevent slipping, and he hovered closer to the captain to prevent him from doing the same. "I can't say that I prefer freezing to death much more than I do burning alive, but at least he won't have the chance to say 'I told you so'. Can you imagine? He'd have been downright smug if we beamed back up all charred."
Oh yes, Spock could imagine. Indeed, he supposed the doctor would have been insufferably satisfied with himself, although someone unfamiliar with the man wouldn't know it by his expression. It would be just as ferocious and irritable as it always were when dealing with injuries, but his sense of supercilious vindication would have radiated out of his posture and mannerisms all the same. Spock could say with certainty that he didn't look forward to experiencing the doctor's uniquely hostile brand of bedside mannerisms anytime soon and was glad that it did not seem to be a likely possibility.
In his peripherals, Kirk stooped down to lift a handful of snow, squeezing it between his hands to form a tight ball. He was smiling with a certain mischievous gleam in his eye and Spock eyed the man warily; he didn't think Jim would throw any at him, but he had been proven wrong in this before. One did not easily forget the impromptu fight of compacted balls of snow that had taken place on Reyllore-Thone XVII, especially as he had been the primary (and apparently only) target of the combined forces of Jim, Doctor McCoy, and Ensign Chekov.
Spock had taken twelve haphazard impacts to his torso and limbs before he'd been able to take refuge behind a wide tree trunk. In this count, he did not include the further two particularly well-aimed hits he'd received directly to the face, courtesy of the captain himself. His ears had been flushed a vivid green and his patience in limited supply by the time they'd beamed back up. It'd been the talk of the ship for a little over two weeks, and he was not eager for a repeat experience. Jim had been more than a little gleefully self-satisfied as he recounted the fight for all to hear, over and over again, all while exaggerating it wildly with each retelling.
It had made for a very distracting working environment.
As if knowing exactly what Spock was thinking, the captain grinned at him slyly, teasingly. The cupped ball of snow was shaped neatly between freezing hands, and Kirk side-eyed him for a moment before he tossed it far towards the cliffside. It burst on impact.
"Don't worry, it might just be a bit too cold for that, Mr. Spock, no matter how fun that was." Fun was not the word that Spock would have chosen to describe the memory of being repeatedly struck by dense projectiles of ice. Cold, uncomfortable, exasperating, but not fun. But the captain only waved away his half-formed protest and took in a deep breath of chilling air. "I know, I know. Just, don't you think it's beautiful here? Freezing, lonely, but… beautiful. Even if it is a radioactive arctic wasteland, it sure is a pretty one."
This triggered the beginnings of a theory in his mind, one Spock ruminated on as they approached the distant boulders. Even with the pain radiating through his mind, he considered all known facts and data points, connecting what he knew together with what he theorized. A radioactive wasteland. Such a possibility would explain more than it would dismiss, would answer more questions than other working theories. It did raise new ones, however, and he did not have enough data to work with. Without further information or the ability to find the radioactive source, it was impossible to hypothesize further, but the spark of intrigue was there. It made him reconsider the landscape with a new perspective.
In the silence, the air was muted around them, as if a heavy blanket had covered the world. Although the wind still blew with a hollow moan through the rock, it sounded stifled and dull to his ears. The snow fell heavily, quieting their footsteps on the rocks and the whirr of the tricorder in his hands. The distant conversation of his crewmates was muffled to mere snippets of occasional sound on the air, quiet enough that even his hearing struggled to pick up the individual voices. Straining to do so required more focus than he could safely expend at the present; he instead resigned himself to keeping tabs via scans only. Spock found that while he vaguely understood the captain's appreciation for the beauty of the land around them, he could not fully agree with—nor appreciate—the sentiment.
He did not want to be here.
That pounding, weighted pain in his head, his mind, only worsened as he moved. It felt as if it beat in time to his pulse, throbbing and aching with every step and breath. He wanted to stop, to close his eyes, to examine his own mind thoroughly to discern and isolate the source of it, but as Kirk wasn't stopping his exploration, Spock too would continue without pause. The captain didn't seem to be suffering from any ill effects other than the cold; he noticed a slow shivering overtake the man's normally easy posture. It was expected in the freezing temperatures; even the thermals of their uniforms couldn't withstand the sustained chill for long, and the heat loss from their exposed necks and heads was significant.
Only himself, then. That narrowed down the causes of the pressure and pain significantly. With every step, the inconvenience of trying to work through it was building. Whereas pain of the body could be controlled with focus of the mind, pain of the mind required a much different kind of effort. He needed meditation, solitude, and time.
He had access to none of those at present.
The captain needed to be told. He needed to be informed immediately of the possibility that Spock's performance of duty might be compromised by the pain, even if only minutely. This was fact; logical, sensible, calculated fact. However… upon observing Jim's expression of pleased delight at the snowflakes falling, Spock hesitated. Wherever the pain came from, it was not hurting his captain, only himself. There was nothing that could be done anyways; the captain was hardly able to heal a headache, nor did he have the required telepathic skillset to soothe the pressure on his mental shields. The only outcome would be that he'd be sent right back down the mountain to beam up for medical treatment. Medical treatment that would be an ineffective waste of time at best. That was not an acceptable result to him; he would be in far better use here, with his captain, rather than in the doctor's less-than-tender mercies. Even with the pain, his unique biology allowed him to physically withstand more abuse than the rest of the crew combined. Once Kirk decided to turn back on his own, perhaps he would broach the topic. Until then, he did not wish to cause a needless interruption.
His tricorder chirped lowly in his hands, and Spock stared down, squinting at it with some effort to see through the ache behind his eyes.
"Got something?" Kirk paused.
"Indeed; most curious, Captain. The outcropping ahead is different than the rock around it; not necessarily in composition, as it is largely made up of the same minerals at the rest of the scanned terrain, however it is in different percentages." The large, looming boulders he had previously taken as the remnants of a possible landslide or the result of past seismic activity, were of significant scientific interest now. "I am also registering metal in great quantities, and I can confirm the presence of pergium among it."
It was only after they arrived at the top of crater that he could see clearly the boulders and rocks through the heavy snowfall. Rocks, Spock recognized immediately, that were not rocks. Although the snow limited his view more than he would have preferred, there were immediately noticeable differences between the boulders and the cliffsides surrounding them.
They were ordered, neatly arranged in something resembling rows; groupings of twenty or more lined alongside each other, with even gaps in between. More than this, there were openings and hollows in some, providing nooks and entrances inside. Thousands of individual stone structures, both atop the crater and within the slopes and plains of it, stretching into the distant horizon. Although there were no apparent standing or fully intact constructions that he could see, it was undeniable what he was looking at.
Buildings.
Or rather, the remains of buildings. It was clear by their appearance that they had collapsed, long, long ago; they were little more than ruins now. Jagged edges smoothed down by the harsh wind and frost to the point that they were rounded instead of rough. Some were large and looming and others were smaller than a standard house might be on both Vulcan and earth. More than adequate to provide multi-roomed shelters should they have been still standing, and he suspected the larger ruins to be collapsed towers or high-rises.
They blended in with the surrounding terrain well enough; made up of the same minerals and materials but ground together in something similar to a concrete or cement. If they had ever been painted, the color had long been worn away. A significant discovery: it was the first sign of tangible, physical life on the planet. Even fallen into ruin, it was evident that the buildings had been crafted by physical means, rather than a strange feature of nature.
"It appears the given coordinates were correct," Spock said, observing the remains of what could only have been a large city through the snow. "We requested the location of their most physical buildings and built structures, and they delivered exactly that."
Kirk shuddered beside him, rubbing his arms up and down frantically to try to maintain warmth as he took in the remains of some kind of society. The captain's skin looked pink, flushed from the burn of the wind and ice; it was clear the weather was getting to him more than he wanted to admit. He looked serious, lips pursed and expression severe. Even as Spock watched the man, the hazel switched to him, making eye contact. In that look, much was said: confusion, curiosity, agreement, caution.
"Yes, it certainly appears so," the captain said lowly. "The mystery grows, but this only asks more questions than it answers. How old would you say these are, exactly?"
The tricorder readings were not promising.
"Unknown, sir. I can only provide rough estimates without proper sample analysis, but the dating of these buildings has exceeded the tricorder's detection range of one-point-five-million years."
"One-point-five—" Kirk blinked, taken off guard momentarily before his expression hardened. "Right, alright. I suppose we didn't clarify that the buildings should be currently inhabited ones. Most species would have taken it as given, considering the context of why we were asking to begin with."
"Most species. Not all. While our respective cultures can detect the various interpretations of a sentence; some species only understand the literal denotation…. and humans have an unfortunate tendency to not say what they mean." Spock had some level of understanding with this; his own experience in using context clues to navigate through mankind's often colorful and confusing verbalizations was not too far in his past. Entering Starfleet Academy had been a culture shock in more ways than one. "It is possible that they are just as confused by our initial request as we are with their resulting form of compliance."
"Oh no, not nearly as confused as I am, I assure you. But hey, at least we've got confirmation on that pergium. I'm not sure some pretty rocks are worth all the fuss and cold, no matter how valuable they are, but the brass'll be happy about it." He pulled out his communicator. "Kirk to landing party, status report."
"Nothing unusual, sir." Ensign Kemen-Varley's voice sounded from the device. "Nothing at all, as a matter of fact. No animals, no plants, just that radiation and a whole bunch of snow."
"Same on our end, captain." Lieutenant Tabea. He could hear the low murmur of Lieutenant Uhura in the background of the open channel, still speaking with the Seskille through her own communicator. "Conversation is still ongoing; we're trying to get some more information out of them, but it's… slow going. They aren't really making much sense."
"Understood, keep trying. In the meantime, Mr. Spock and I have located a settlement… or rather the remains of one; it looks completely abandoned. We're going to take a quick look around, see if we can get some answers. Keep me updated. Kirk out." With a snap, he closed the communicator and slipped it back to his belt. "Shall we?"
The trek up down into the crater was considerably more dangerous than the climb up the mountain slope had been. It was slick and steep; some areas had sheer vertical drops down. Spock attempted multiple times to place himself before the captain so as to judge the pathway for potential hazards, but Kirk appeared wise to his plan and fought him on it every step of the way. With some exasperation, he was forced to allow the other man to go first and, as a result, hovered closer than he otherwise would have to prevent his captain from falling should the ground prove unstable. The stubbornness of humans. This human in particular.
The wind moaned through the ruins of the buildings, hollow and collapsed as they were. Although partially covered by snow, Spock immediately identified the signs of former civilization. Openings that had once been doors and windows, clumps of deteriorated metal both outside and inside the buildings, structures that might have been fountains or statues, evidence of a road system. All evidence of ancient life, but far too eroded now to recognize what that society might have been like. All he could say for certain was that it had been a large one; there were approximately 37,281 individual buildings in and around the crater. It was likely there were considerably more, but some were too dilapidated or crumbled to be factually countable.
He provided this information to the captain.
"You know, even the most remote ancient sites on earth have some evidence of modern life; archeologists coming and going, tire tracks, preservation equipment, something. It doesn't look like anyone's been here in—well, at least anytime recently." Kirk blew into his hands to try to warm them up; he was shivering outright now, and his ears, nose, and cheeks were flushed dark from the wind and cold. "I don't understand it. We've got Seskille voices, we've got Seskille coordinates, we've got Seskille buildings, but we don't have Seskille."
"We also have Seskille machinery." Spock kept his gaze on the dark screen of the tricorder to avoid the glaring brightness of the snow; the pain had spiked once more. "Many of the metal remains have distinct patterns to them, the pergium arranged in what may be a fuel source of some kind. They appear to be the remnants of transportation."
"Like old automobiles?"
"Unknown. It does, however, suggest that whoever the inhabitants were, they were an advanced culture."
Kirk ran a half-numb hand down his face, frustrated by the gaps of information.
"Alright, so we know—or can pretty safely assume—that an advanced population lived here at least one-point-five-million years ago; that's… something. Not really something we can use, but something—and I'll be honest, I'll take just about anything at this point." The captain ducked into one of the hollows of the building, examining the bare, empty space.
Spock lingered outside the doorway, seeing little point in investigating the area further and expending that energy. Whatever answers they were seeking, he did not think it likely that the ruins would provide them; they seemed to only be raising further questions. He wished he could provide the answers the captain wanted, that he himself also wanted, but this was just as much a mystery to him. In a better state of mind, he might have been able to theorize with far more accuracy, or extrapolate better data, but he was not in that better state. No, indeed, he was far from it.
The pain pulsing behind his eyes was quickly approaching intolerable levels, and no attempts to block it out were proving sufficient enough. He felt nauseous, dizzy, and rapidly lightheaded, but also heavy and pulled down by a great, smothering pressure. Not an external force, but an internal sensation; he felt pressed on from his own mind.
The scent of flowers had not returned. The split-second sight of his cabin aboard the Enterprise had not returned. Try as he might, with every scan and rescan, he could not detect any anomaly that might have caused it. His senses were normally sharp and focused and keen; there was nothing surrounding him that he did not already expect. The captain rustling around inside the empty room, buildings looming around them, the groan of the wind through the crater, the snow falling from the sky. Nothing out of place. Nothing that would explain what had happened.
And yet, he had experienced what he had experienced. Pain could explain away much, but this did not feel like the parasites of Deneva. That had been a physical pain, and a controllable one at that. It had taken time, what with that level of agony being foreign to him, but he'd managed to suppress it through sheer force of will eventually. This pain was different. There was something wrong, truly wrong. Something in all this that he was missing.
The captain needed to be informed. Spock had attempted to rationalize his decision to remain quiet, but those justifications were tenuous at best, and they failed to hold up to increased pain-driven self-scrutiny.
Spock cleared his throat unnecessarily, finding himself oddly unsettled by the idea of verbally confirming his predicament. He had done his best, these past few months, to avoid being any kind of inconvenience to the Enterprise, the mission, to Jim. To admit an issue now should not have been as afflicting as it was now proving to be. Logically, keeping quiet on the topic had the potential to disrupt the mission more than his admission of a problem might. He was already unable to execute his duties with his usual efficiency; he was distracted, his focus was off, and his senses were debilitated. Any one of these complications would be reason enough to inform the captain. He knew this. It was logical.
Why, then, was he so hesitant?
"… Captain," Spock said very quietly, and he realized his voice could not be heard over the wind. Closing his eyes and forcing himself into a rigid parade rest, he cleared his throat again and said, in a louder tone: "Captain."
"Yes?"
"Sir, there is—"
Spock flinched as something hard and cold exploded against his chest, bursting into powder upon impact. His eyes flew open, startled, and he looked down at his uniform shirt, uncomprehendingly at first. His brow furrowed.
White. Snow. A snowball.
In the span of his distraction, another snowball struck him, this time bursting against the side of his head and filling his left ear with freezing snow. Blinking slowly, and more than a little appalled, Spock lifted his gaze to find the grinning face of his captain—his captain who happened to be wiping incriminating snow off of his hands. The captain seemed to be waiting for a specific kind of response, that playful gleam wild in his eyes as he ducked out of the safety of his shelter.
Spock stared back at him expressionlessly, stunned to speechlessness.
Perplexingly, this appeared to be exactly the kind of reaction that Kirk had been looking for and his resulting laugh was breathless; deep and uncontrolled. The smile on his wind-flushed face spread clear to his eyes, which shined from amusement. It ached at Spock to see it; to see Jim looking so intoxicatingly happy. He knew the captain was trying to relieve some of the stress of the unknown; to add some harmless amusement and break up the frustration, and it might have worked, another time. There were plenty of concerns with the mission, with the present situation, but in this small moment, Jim shined so brightly. It made him regret that he could not partake in the heat of that blinding, dizzying light.
"I know, I'm sorry, but the look on your face... I'm so sorry, Mr. Spock. I just really couldn't resist." The captain looked anything but contrite; he didn't stop smiling, still chuckling even as he stepped up and brushed the snow from Spock's shirt and hair with a shivering hand. In fact, the evidence of his presumably accurate aim only appeared to delight him further. Spock wasn't certain what look Jim was referring to; he did not have one. His expression was as stone. "But you were saying?"
Spock had been about to say that he was ill. That he was too ill to continue with the mission and that his presence in the landing party needed to be replaced immediately. He had been about to say that there was something afflicting his mind in a way that he did not understand. He had been about to say—
His voice faltered and he could only stare at Jim; at the elated, proud light in his eyes and the carefree smile that he so rarely wore these days.
"… Only that the wind has eroded any visible markings there might have been on the buildings around us, and I estimate that it will be the same with the others. This city is of archeological interest, and scientifically intriguing, but there is little chance of further discovery that might influence the success of the mission."
Kirk blew out a calming puff of breath, nodding as he did so. "Probably should start heading back anyways; too much longer down here and Scotty'll be beaming back popsicles. Assuming, of course, that his majesty allows it." By way of context, Spock gathered that the captain was speaking of the ambassador.
They fell in step with each other, side-by-side towards the steep slope of the crater. Their boot prints were already covered by the snow; it was coming down harder now and Spock thought it likely to only get worse. It had been a number of months since they'd had a mission on such a cold planet and any other time, he might have looked forward to experiencing the unique environment. Vulcan could not have been more different in landscape or climate, after all, and there was a certain novelty to experiencing the snow in such vast quantities. Any other time, he would have found it refreshing. Now, he wanted only to leave.
Spock swallowed thickly as he walked, forcing down the bile that threatened to rise up in his throat. His eyesight blurred; the tricorder in his hands fading in and out of focus as he tried to read it. He was compromised; this was truer now than it had been before. The pain had been an irritation at first, but it was now a problem. One he could no longer ignore, no matter how he wished he could.
Breathe. Focus. Calm.
It was getting harder to grasp any of those concepts. The incline up the crater wall would not have presented him any difficulty before, but now it felt brutal to his body. The effort and strain made him struggle to take in a full breath, and each step pounded like a drum in his head. He could hear his own heartbeat, rapid and thrumming. He felt nauseous and ill in a way he could rarely recall experiencing before. Not sickness of the body; not sickness caused by any identifiable virus, bacteria, or toxin. There was nothing wrong with him physically, which caused all the greater concern. His working hypothesis was that this had been environmentally caused, by means of exposure to some unknown substance or illness, but he was having to reevaluate that as his condition declined.
Spock pressed his lips tightly together to prevent his expression from changing. His brows were furrowed despite his best efforts to smooth them out, and he hoped Jim would not notice. The captain did, though. Of course he did.
"Spock, you alright?"
He could not speak now, not while still walking. It was the rocking sensation of movement; if he opened his mouth, he felt certain he would vomit. Instead, he gave a harsh nod and affirmative humming sound. Eyes straight forward, focusing on the makeshift trail in front of him. The snow was at his ankle now, and he had to stay alert for any buried rocks that might stagger his feet out from beneath him. If he fell…
"Uhura to Captain Kirk."
The captain tugged his communicator from his belt and flipped it open with a chirp.
"Go ahead, Lieutenant."
"Sir, the Seskille are asking to speak with you, when you get a moment. I've been trying to talk with them, and it was productive at first but then they just… stopped making sense. They keep asking about unrelated topics, jumping from thing to thing, and I've not made any headway since. They've keep asking to talk to the same person as before, and so..."
Kirk gave Spock a careful side-eying once-over, seemed to come to some internal decision, and turned his attention back to the communicator.
"I'm in the middle of something that requires my full attention. Transfer them to Hammett."
There was a pause of silence before: "Sir?" Even Lieutenant Uhura, who always spoke with such polite, calm professionalism, couldn't keep the skepticism out of her voice.
"Just as I said: transfer them to Hammett. The man's an ambassador, isn't he? Let him… I don't know, ambass," Kirk said, and to anyone listening he would sound perfectly confident in his decision. Spock, however, could hear the undertone of derision coloring his words. "It's about time he pulls his own weight. Let me know if there's any issues. Kirk out."
The captain sounded as if he fully expected there to be.
They continued, and he couldn't help but notice that the captain was glancing at him every few steps, expression searching and wary. Spock could not afford the effort it would take to reassure him that everything was satisfactory, not when the pain was so close to excruciating. That it only affected him, and with such severity, raised entirely new concerns. There was no one aboard the Enterprise that had the specialty to diagnose or treat telepathic injuries, should that indeed be what this was. He knew Doctor M'Benga had interned on Vulcan for a time, but his ability to assist would be hindered by the glaring limitation of him being human.
This situation was not like Deneva, but he wished sincerely that it was. Pain of the body would be controllable to a certain degree. Furthermore, it would be understandable and potentially even treatable. Pain of the mind was a far more complicated dilemma, and one he did not have an immediate answer for. There would be no easy solution; he felt his controls already fraying at the edges and even meditating now would not bring quick relief to actual inflicted damage.
Jim would be unable to help, Spock realized grimly. If he told the captain the extent of the pain, Jim would be incapable of helping, but it would not stop him from trying either. He'd go to the ends of the universe to keep those he cared about safe, even at the risk of his own safety, and he somehow counted Spock among those lucky few. No-win scenarios did not exist to James Kirk; he simply would not accept that there was nothing he could do. He would look for another way, just as he had when Spock had been blinded. The captain had been distressed, angry and lashing out from grief, but he had not stopped searching for a better solution to—
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—"
"What is? Unable to what?"
Spock blinked and then blanched at the glaring, shocking light of the snow around him. It felt blinding, after being surrounded by and seeing nothing but darkness… but that was not right, something was not right, because he should be in the light, able to see it with full clarity. He was not blind, so why then had—?
For a moment, he was confused; his mind felt stuttering, as if it were a machine starting to wear at the joints. Skipping tracks and gears and shifting haphazardly within his normally well-ordered thoughts. He had been on the Enterprise. He had felt the warmth of it, the scent of filtered air, heard the chirping sounds of medbay and the low hum of the engines below. But he was not there, not now. He was not blinded. He was on Seskilles VII, on a mission. Right, the landing party, the objective, the captain.
"Unable to what? Spock?" Kirk took a step closer to him; his hand was half extended, as if he wasn't fully sure whether to reach out and touch him or not. Whatever it was that the captain saw when he paused and truly looked Spock over, it appeared to alarm him greatly, for he immediately moved in and gripped him firmly by the shoulders. It was identical, Spock thought, to the moment prior, when he had also felt Jim's hands on him. Identical in all ways except one: he could see Jim's face now. "Spock?"
To his distress, Spock realized he would not be able to explain this away, nor hide it any longer. The pounding in his head peaked and spiked and throbbed so violently that he wanted to scream.
His knees buckled, and he felt himself starting to tip. Vertigo and disorientation made his nausea surge, and he was torn between catching himself from falling or preventing himself from vomiting. The choice was made for him; Kirk's arms wrapped tightly around his shoulders and tugged him inwards to stop him from dropping. Spock pressed his lips firmly together as he breathed through his nose in harsh, panting breaths; he did not dare open his mouth or he would surely be ill. His head spun; black edged his sight as his vision tunneled…
Wavering and dizzy, Spock sagged bonelessly into the arms of his captain.
This chapter contains multiple references to the TOS episode 'Operation - Annihilate!', which I cannot recommend enough! Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to review, I truly appreciate it!
Vulcan:
K'oh-nar — The fear of emotional vulnerability and emotional exposure.
Samek-Tam'a — Cold Ghost; a spirit that brings a cold temperature.