— Chapter Fifteen —
— Limein —
The captain, Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant Uhura, and Lieutenant Commander Scott were already present when Spock finally entered the briefing room, and it was clear by the sound of laughter that he'd walked into the middle of a story. An animated, lively Uhura was in her element, leaning in as she related her tale to the group.
The ambassador had not arrived yet.
"—that isn't what you're supposed to say when being offered a meal, so of course we were all arrested," she said in amusement, and Spock quickly identified the incident she was speaking of. It had taken Captain Pike nearly three weeks to return to his normal scent, and it had been difficult to be around him due to his enhanced sense of smell. "We spent the rest of the night locked in a kind of barn with some of the worst smelling—" She broke off as she spotted him. "Mr. Spock! Welcome back, you're looking better!"
"Thank you, Lieutenant," he replied politely, although he suspected he did not look nearly as better as she claimed.
He had taken a moment to compose himself in the hallway, spending approximately one-point-five-three-nine minutes stabilizing his breathing, and a further twenty-three seconds forcing his physical reactions under control. His hands no longer trembled, but he thought that might be from clenching them so tightly behind his back rather than any true composure. They ached from the force of it, nails digging in, but the sting was grounding. Before entering the room, Spock had smoothed his uniform down to professional neatness, wary of anything that might give him away. He was not soaked in sweat, nor was he disheveled, but that was not to say he outwardly appeared knew there was a high probability that there were indications or signs he'd been unable to fully conceal; something that might give him away. He lacked any other option but to continue on as if he were fine. As long as he appeared to function to an acceptable standard, there was nothing they could logically say to refute it. He would offer them nothing with which they could point to as firm, concrete evidence of his lapsing control.
This was especially relevant, as Doctor McCoy had fixed him with a narrow-eyed stare when Spock entered the room, and he had yet to look away.
Spock thought it best to avoid him.
"Yes, much better. Hats off to you, Bones, for scraping together a miracle and giving me back my first officer. Mr. Spock, it's good to see you back on your feet." The captain sounded pleased, and it was audible in the smooth rumble of his voice that he was in a good mood. There were still traces of laughter echoing his words. With a languid tilt of his chair, Jim turned to face Spock. There was a soft look in the warm hazel of his eyes, and the gentle smile that spread across his face was one of fondness and affection.
Spock met his gaze evenly, and it was because of this that he could see the exact instant that the captain truly looked at him. The smile stiffened like it'd been frozen; hardening and growing taut as all traces of warmth, fondness, and affection drained away. A worried tension took its place, rising up sharp, concerned, alert. Slowly, the smile faded entirely.
"Thank you, Captain," Spock said sedately, pretending as though Jim were not staring at him with open, troubled suspicion. The doctor was still watching him as well, his expression was inscrutable. Both looks sank into his stomach like lead, and he made certain not to make eye contact with either of them. Instead, he moved to his chair with his gaze adverted. He was so incredibly tired of being observed like a specimen. "It is indeed gratifying to be back—however, I do not believe a miracle was responsible for my return. The evidence supports that it was predominantly due to my faster healing ability."
McCoy audibly huffed. "It was predominantly due to me patching your thick skull back together with my bare hands. Let's not forget that part."
"I did not forget. I was there while you were doing it." He took his seat to the captain's immediate left, across from McCoy and beside Lieutenant Uhura. She offered him a small smile, and he inclined his head in return.
"You were anesthetized and drooling while I was doing it."
"I should further hope," Spock continued in a tranquil, composed voice, "that you were not effectuating surgery without the proper sterile protective equipment. If you were indeed operating with bare hands, as you say,that would be a most egregious display of medical malpra—"
"Gentlemen, please." The captain raised a hand, halting the reply. He didn't look as amused by the back-and-forth as he usually did, instead appearing distracted. His expression had smoothed from one of concern to a blank, neutral mask, and his keen eyes looked Spock up and down as if he might find something new if he only stared hard enough. There should not have been anything to find; Spock had made certain that not so much as a hair was out of place.
But of course, Jim knew him well. Too well.
"You were missed on the bridge," Lieutenant Uhura's light, musical voice said from beside him, and Spock was grateful to have a reason to shift his attention away from the captain's visible distress. "I don't think I've ever seen the captain look so alarmed. We all were, of course, but he nearlybit the head off your replacement the first shift you missed. She did just fine, don't get me wrong, but she didn't give data to the fifth decimal point, and the absence was noticeably felt."
Although Spock did not smile, something in him softened at both Uhura's comment and the reaction of the captain. He had heard the odd phrase before and understood the context of it well enough to know that Jim had not engaged in cannibalism on the bridge, despite what the metaphor suggested. He would have to speak to Ensign Keller to ensure that she was sufficiently recovered emotionally from experiencing Kirk's ire; he would not have called her timid, but she was soft-spoken and would no doubt have reacted in a self-depreciating manner to perceived criticism.
"A lack of precise data is logical reason for concern," Spock told her. He could see the captain and doctor exchanging expressions—experience told him that a non-verbal conversation was taking place—and he was not so compromised as to think it was not about him. As long as they did not confront him on the matter directly, he was willing to pretend for the moment that they were not carrying on their silent display. Instead, Spock allowed himself to be distracted; ignoring the lieutenant would have been considered rude. "As I will be returning to the bridge tomorrow per normal, I will be certain to verbally provide exact figures as they become necessary so as to negate the possibility of further issue."
"I'm happy to hear it, Mr. Spock." Uhura did indeed sound happy, and Spock felt warm at the positive emotion in her voice. "I was so worried when the captain told us what happened. I was forced to return to the ship before we could find you down there, but I visited you after you got out of surgery. You were—I almost didn't recognize you, and they said that you looked even worse when you first came in. I can hardly imagine." She reached out a hand and patted him gently on the arm. Spock tensed, but the contact was brief and did not touch skin.
Spock was not close with many of his peers; as a Vulcan, he did not consider extraneous socialization to be vital to continued performance of duty. However, Lieutenant Uhura was someone that he would consider to be more than simply a colleague—perhaps someone he even considered to be a friend, although he did not often seek her company out. She was one of the more popular crewmembers on the Enterprise; she did not lack for friendship, and so he did not feel distress at the lack of personal time he allotted her. There were occasions where he took his ka'athyra to the recreation room to play, and she would sometimes join him if she were available. Her voice complimented the sound of his lyre nicely, and she was also becoming a proficient player of it in her own right.
"I have recovered sufficiently," Spock assured her. He risked a subtle glimpse at the captain. He had abandoned his unspoken discussion with the doctor and instead was speaking in a quiet voice with Mr. Scott and Doctor McCoy both. Spock heard—could not help but hear—the mention of labs and storage and it confirmed his theory that the conversation was about himself. He suppressed the paranoia as best he could. He could not afford to be emotionally impaired before the debrief had even started.
"I sang to you for a while, you know," Lieutenant Uhura continued, leaning back in her chair. "I know that Vulcans don't believe in the healing power of music, and even I know it's not logical, but I'd like to think it made you rest a little better. It worked for the captain, in any case." Spock arched a perplexed brow and received a sly, amused smile in return. "Oh, he was there too—and during Mr. Scott's visit as well, from what I hear. Christine let slip to me that he parked himself in the next bed over for the entire first day and wouldn't be moved for anything. When they eventually tried to shoo him out, he apparently claimed that he had a headache, which surely meant that he required an overnight stay."
There was an odd swooping sensation in his stomach as he listened; one that was somehow both unpleasant and exhilarating simultaneously. It spread a peculiar fluttering throughout him. Spock made to reply but was interrupted.
"Since we have everyone, shall we begin?" The captain spoke in a professional, neutral tone, but the look he aimed at the briefing room doors was distinctly menacing. "I'm sure we've all got better ways to waste our time than with this meeting, and I'd rather like to get to them sooner rather than later."
"If I may, Captain, I cannae help but notice we are missing a certain someone."
The captain's lips thinned noticeably. "We have everyone who matters," he amended, and his words were clipped. "If he can't bother to show up on time, that's his own business. I run this ship on punctuality, and I'm not going to wait around for—" Kirk took a short breath, drumming his fingers on the table. "The ambassador can show up or not, I'm not going to delay the meeting for him either way. Command is breathing down my neck, and this whole thing has already dragged on long enough as it is."
It had dragged on, Spock knew, because of him. The meeting should have taken place the week prior; it was only due to his recovery time that it had been pushed back as long as it had. Guilt tightened his throat, made his hands twitch. Gritting his jaw, he forced the emotion back as best he could. Control. Focus. It was one thing to lose composure in the solitude of his quarters, a quiet storage room, or an empty hallway. It was another to do so in the company of his peers and his captain. He could not allow such a visible display of impuissance.
Taking a steadying breath, Spock reached for the rigid, measured control he remembered having prior to Seskilles VII. It was a painful, indistinct, and nebulous concept now, but he gripped it tightly with whatever lingering shreds of stability he still had left. His head throbbed. His stomach churned. His mind felt blistered from the attempt at control, control, control. He did not feel it—not in any way that truly mattered—but he allowed the echo of it to smooth his expression to a blank, stoic, unaffected mask. It would not last; already he could feel it straining and cracking at the edges. He only needed it to hold for this meeting, these questions. It had to. Any other possibility was unthinkable.
It was not true control, Spock knew, and the awareness carried with it a hollow sense of resignation. It was not stability, restraint, or discipline. It was merely the illusion of it; muscle memory combined with the faint, lingering remnants of what it had once felt like to be in control of himself. This was only a mask; empty, impassioned, and void of all emotion. An unfortunately temporary one as well, because he was certain he could not maintain it for long.
Control. Control. Control.
His mental desert burned from the heat of the pressure he placed it under, and his mind burned right along with it.
"We'll start with the facts as we know them," the captain began, PADD in hand. "Eight days ago, we contacted the inhabitants of Seskilles VII, named the Seskille Collective, to arrange for diplomatic relations and potential mining rights. Ship's sensors were unable to breech the atmosphere due to an unknown energy field surrounding the planet, which left the Enterprise unable to scan the surface for possible lifeforms. The Seskille provided us with specific coordinates, and a landing party beamed down to Seskilles VII, consisting of myself, First Officer Spock, Ambassador Roger Hammett, Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, Ensign Mukhammed Kemen-Varley, and Lieutenant Aileen Tabea. Upon arrival, we encountered severe weather and temperatures that we were not prepared for. Tricorder readings indicated no lifeforms but for the landing party—including the absence of any animal or plant life. The Seskille continued to contact us via comms, but we were unable to locate them by either sight or scan, and they claimed they likewise were unable to locate us. The decision was made to split up to cover more ground. We split—"
The doors opened.
Ambassador Roger Hammett entered the briefing room hurriedly, arms laden with dataPADDs and microtapes. Two dropped as he made for his chair. No one bent to help pick them up, and so the ambassador was forced to discard his burdens down on the table with an alarming clatter of sound and double back for them.
Spock blinked at the sight of him, admittedly taken aback. The ambassador did… not look well. Not ill, exactly, but certainly not like the smiling, absently condescending man Spock had become accustomed to. There were circles beneath his eyes; his normally jovial expression pulled taut and strained. His hair was disheveled, as if he'd been running his fingers through it often, and stress lined his mouth in a frown. He looked harried, anxious, flustered.
Spock caught Doctor McCoy's eyes from across the table and tilted his head with a questioning arch of his brow—a specific gesture that he knew McCoy would correctly interpret as the non-verbal inquiry: is there a problem with the ambassador? The slight quirk of lips he got in return looked decidedly unsurprised and, furthermore, unsympathetic. In fact, an observant glance around the table informed him that there was little compassion to be found in any of his colleagues; they all watched Hammett struggle with arranging his belongings with flat, impatient expressions.
Interesting. Spock had been out for only eight days, but it appeared that he had missed a considerable amount. The ambassador was obviously stressed; this was indicative of an external source being responsible for, as the human saying went, knocking him down a peg. He theorized—and there was a ninety-six-point-eight-three percent chance that he was correct in this theory—that Starfleet had been pressuring Hammett just as much, if not more, than they were the captain. The mission objectives were Kirk's given orders as well, but it was ultimately Ambassador Hammett's duty to oversee the smooth operation of it. Predictably, as was common during first contact missions where the Enterprise was involved, it had not gone at all smoothly.
This was not Hammett's first assignment; Spock had read the man's file in detail before he boarded, primarily to gather information, but also to evaluate the prospective risk of danger to his captain (refreshingly minimal), and so he knew that to be a fact. His list of missions had not been long, impressive, or even remarkable, but there had been enough of them that it the ambassador should have been seasoned to the potential for complications. Only, after re-evaluating those listed assignments with more scrutiny, Spock realized that they had all been considered non-critical. Not unimportant—Starfleet did not assign diplomats to unimportant missions—but certainly none that Command would have invested much energy or necessity to. Perhaps, Spock reflected, this was the first time that Roger Hammett felt actual, genuine pressure to succeed.
The contrast was startling. He was certain that the captain was likewise under stress from Starfleet Command, but, as with any kind of adversity, Kirk took that stress and channeled it into determination, decision, and action. Never before had the captain faltered beneath the weight of orders, and Spock knew he would not do so now. Spock did not deny that Starfleet could be outstandingly oppressive with the form of their demands, but he uncharitably—and uncommonly—felt his opinion of the ambassador fall further at the sight of his obvious and visible discomposure.
"I'm here, I'm here," Hammett said, sounding flustered as he arranged the PADDs on the table before him in an anxious, disorganized spread. Lieutenant Uhura primly and pointedly moved her own ordered, neat display further from the chaos, despite it being three empty seats away. "Shall we get this thing moving along, then? Good, good. Let's briefly go over what we know. Captain, if you will start us from the beginning?"
The captain's eyes were sharp and forbidding as he stared the ambassador down for a long, silent moment—long enough that Hammett began to squirm in his chair.
"—we split into three groups," the captain continued where he'd left off, as if the ambassador had not interrupted him. His voice was cold. "Lieutenants Uhura and Tabea went west, Ensign Kemen-Varley and Ambassador Hammett went south, and Mr. Spock and I went north up the mountain range. The Seskille maintained that they were unable to locate us and, likewise, we were unable to locate them. We came across the ruins of an abandoned city—if you'll refer to your PADDs, Archeology has already surveyed the area; section twenty-two, exhibit eight. Preliminary tricorder readings indicated it was at least one-hundred-and-fifty-million years old, which was the limit of the tricorder's dating capability. We confirmed the presence of pergium at the ruin site, in quantities abundant enough to meet Starfleet's conditions for potential mining operations. Due to worsening weather conditions, I made the call to turn back. During our return, Mr. Spock seemed to become… afflicted." Jim paused uncomfortably, expression pinching as if he weren't sure how much to say and regretful that he had to say anything at all.
Spock did not meet his eyes.
"According to both Lieutenant Uhura and Ambassador Hammett, the Seskille were no longer making verbal sense in their communication, so they were transferred to me. They claimed to have found… one of us, but at the time this seemed unlikely as none of the crew reported any contact. Mr. Spock and I were heading back down the mountain side when…ahh… when Mr. Spock fell over the side of the cliff. After informing the away team and Lieutenant Commander Scott of the situation, I executed a search for him. Eventually, I was forced to abandon this search due to the worsening conditions. After beaming back to the ship, Doctor McCoy, Ensign Steen Tomasson, and I returned to the surface in a shuttlecraft to better look for Mr. Spock. We located him in critical physical condition, taking shelter in one of the ruins. Doctor McCoy was able to stabilize him, during which Mr. Spock informed us that the Seskille were telepathically speaking to him. When I touched Spock's hand, I… felt them as well, for a brief moment, and can confirm the validity of this. We transferred Mr. Spock to the ship for further treatment, and he has been out on medical leave until this morning. Since that first away party, there have been nine teams sent to Seskilles VII for geographical and xenoanthropological study. None of them report any mental or telepathic contact from the Seskille."
There wouldn't have been any, of course; none of the humans involved in the away teams were psi-sensitive. The Seskille would not have been able to merge with them in that manner. Spock was the only one on the Enterprise capable of telepathic communication—the only one capable of speaking to them at all in a way they might understand. The irony was not lost on him that, of all the emotional humans populating the crew, it was only his own limited emotional range that the Seskille were able to contact. His telepathic ability had never before felt so much like a curse.
Hammett made an abrupt noise, one so loud as to be purposely interruptive. He looked over his PADD in an exaggerated manner, an annoyed frown tilting his lips. "And Commander Spock? You say he was afflicted. By what? Did he give a reason for this supposed affliction?"
"Dizziness and a headache. There was nothing supposed about it, though; it was obvious to me that he wasn't well."
"In what way was it obvious? Was your first officer showing some kind of emotional reaction?"
Spock stared at his PADD with feigned investment, incapable of looking up. He breathed in, he breathed out, and he repeated control, control, control. The mask he wore began to strain, to crack, and it took nearly more energy than he had to maintain it. Beside him, he felt Lieutenant Uhura stiffen and make a soft noise of outrage beneath her breath. Mr. Scott across the table likewise made a sound, but it was neither soft nor under his breath; rather, it was an obvious, ostentatious scoff meant to audibly demonstrate his indignation.
It should have felt warming to know that his peers were appalled by the suggestion, but he only felt cold inside. In this one instance, and although it was undoubtedly meant to be insulting, the ambassador had not been incorrect. Spock had reacted emotionally. He recalled collapsing against his captain; recalled curling into him like a shivering child. Such a visible lapse of his discipline had been undeniably emotional in nature, and he was surprised the captain had not called him out on it. Jim had rarely ignored an opportunity to tease him for any perceived display of feeling before. Although, Spock reconsidered, that was uncharitable. His captain might have indulged in harmless teasing, but he also knew such skills as tact and timing, and his attention had been more focused on ensuring Spock's health in that moment than to poke fun at him.
(Any other Vulcan would have been able to maintain some kind of control, surely. But not Spock. Not he, who could do nothing but feel.)
(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)
"Commander Spock is a Vulcan, Ambassador; he doesn't have emotional reactions. To imply otherwise is considered the height of rudeness to him—and to me. I took courses on diplomacy too, Hammett, and I know for a fact that they covered that kind of misunderstanding in the first semester." The captain's voice was as tight as a whipcrack as he shot the man down, and there was a dangerous, ominous tilt to his head. Spock identified it immediately as one of unspoken threat. He did not raise his voice, nor did he verbally issue that threat. He did not needto.
"I'm not insinuating anything, Captain, no need to get riled up! I'm… I'm only attempting to clarify what happened, and I'm not the only one who is wondering! Starfleet has been messaging me night and day about the curiously vague nature of your mission statement during this section, and I'm trying to provide them with answers, as should you be! But, back to the matter. You say he obviously wasn't well. Did Commander Spock make any mention of the Seskille at that point?"
"He's right beside me, you know," Kirk said darkly. His expression was no longer so stoic, eyes cold and flinty. He did not do something so obvious as scowl—he was too professional for that—but the low set of his jaw might as well have been one to those who knew him well enough. Spock did. "You can direct your questions about him to him. After a week of wringing your hands outside his door like you were part of the hallway, I'm shocked you aren't shoving questions down his throat now that you've finally got your chance."
"Captain, by all known laws of physical matter, the ambassador would be unable to—" Spock attempted to intervene, to lightly prod at the metaphor so that it might soothe his captain down, because he could see him growing aggravated. He was interrupted when the ambassador turned to him with a long-suffering air and a heavy sigh.
"Very well, fine. First Officer Spock, when the captain said you were afflicted, what were your symptoms exactly?"
Spock took a breath, stomach clenching tightly at being put on the spot. In his peripheral vision, he could see the immediate gleam of regret in the captain's eyes at having, as the human idiom went, thrown him under the bus. He'd never been able to grasp the phrasing before, as there were rarely any kind of physical, tangible buses or, for that matter, any other mode of transportation involved. He thought he had a better understanding of it now. This debrief felt not unlike being rolled beneath the crushing weight of a vehicle and left mangled. Indeed, he considered briefly that he would have preferred that painful actuality to this one.
"My symptoms were as follows: a migraine, nausea, vertigo, and fatigue—all to various degrees of severity, and all of which worsened overtime. I was also beginning to display symptoms of mild hypothermia within twenty-minutes of beaming to Seskilles VII," Spock said tonelessly, and he made certain his hands were concealed beneath the table so as to hide any visible shaking. They were not doing so yet, but he knew it was inevitable that they would. He could feel that prickling, tingling itch beneath his skin again.
"And did you have any of those symptoms before you beamed down?"
"No."
"So you were aware that it was something on the planet that caused it, correct?" Ambassador Hammett didn't wait for Spock to answer before he continued, thumbing over his PADD with twitching, restless fingers. "Mr. Spock, please state what happened on Seskilles VII, beginning when you first became afflicted."
"The landing party had just separated into three groups. The captain informed the Seskille of our arrival and attempted to determine their location. They claimed they were already present. As a Vulcan, my hearing can perceive higher frequencies than human ability, and their voice is… particularly unpleasant to me. A migraine formed as a result of exposure to this, so I utilized meditation to suppress the pain. It was immediately after this that I experienced a brief visual anomaly." Spock paused. He could see the captain looking at him from his peripherals, surprised and confused. He had never told Jim about what he had seen, neither during the experience, nor any time after. His stomach sank. "It lasted approximately zero-point-five-eight seconds, during which my tricorder displayed no irregularities. I dismissed it. I continued with the captain up the mountainside. There I—"
"What kind of anomaly?"
"A visual one, as I stated exactly fifteen-point-three-seven seconds ago..."
"No, I know that!" Hammett snapped, glowering at him as a red bloom of annoyance began to creep up his neck. "I'm not deaf! My hearing may not be as superior as yours is, but I've certainly got ears!"
There was an audible, muttered comment from Mr. Scott—who did not seem to be making any legitimate attempt at lowering his voice—about just how prominent those ears were. Spock heard the unflattering comparison be made to a bowling ball with nubs. McCoy loudly snorted, likewise not making any effort to conceal the sound. Lieutenant Uhura cleared her throat lightly at his side to cover a laugh, pressing her lips together firmly.
Spock sighed, appalled at the lack of professionalism.
"Specify the nature of your inquiry."
"What did the visual anomaly look like?!"
This was edging into territory that he did not wish to discuss. It was unavoidable in the long term, of course; he knew better than to think he could avoid detailing exactly how the Seskille communicated. He had hoped to avoid it a while longer; it felt invading to speak of his memories to those around him. There had been times before, plenty of them, where he shared small pieces of his life—his childhood, his youth, his loneliness at the academy—with the captain. There was a mutual trust in their friendship; Jim shared his life, and Spock met that in kind. Revealing such personal information had always felt… intimate. Vulnerable. It was a conversation to be had over a game of chess and a steaming mug of tea, in low, soft lighting and murmured voices.
The briefing room could not have been further from that ideal; it was open and impersonal, with garish fluorescents and watchful stares.
"I saw my quarters on the Enterprise."
"You never told me about that," the captain's voice was even, but Spock could still hear the audible sound of unease behind his words. "Why didn't you say something?"
"The vision lasted less than one second, Captain. I… logically reasoned that it had been my imagination. I was already compromised by a migraine, and I had been thinking of my quarters only moments prior. It was not outside the realm of possibility."
"You still should have—"
"Continue, Commander," Hammett cut in, writing notes in a scrawling cursive. Notetaking was unnecessary; the computer was recording the briefing and would be able to easily transcribe it to textual format with perfect accuracy. From the grandiose way with which he wrote, Spock thought he might be trying to make a point—although whatthat point was, he could not begin to guess.
"The captain and I traveled up the mountainside. I maintained awareness of the tricorder scans to ensure there were no threats that might endanger the captain or the rest of the crew." Spock saw Jim trade a troubled look with Doctor McCoy, which he did not understand as he'd said nothing that could be interpreted as troubling. "It began to snow. The white flakes produced a mental association to a tra-wan svai, a shrub native to my home planet that is known for its abundance of white petals. This resulted in a second sensory phenomenon." He could predict the question before it was asked and, although he did not like it, he specified further. "—I detected the scent of that flower in the air on Seskilles VII. There were no readings of flora within range of the scans, and so I—"
"Thought it was your imagination?" The captain was frowning at him. To anyone else, his expression might have been considered mild, but Spock could see the subtle, visible traces of hurt in his eyes. "Once, maybe, but twice? You aren't prone to flights of fancy, Spock, and I've never known your imagination to get away from you. Is there a reason you didn't mention something was wrong?"
He hadn't mentioned it because the captain had been happy, and he had not wanted to ruin that.
He hadn't mentioned it because Jim had been smiling, and he'd wanted to bask in the sight of it a while longer.
He hadn't mentioned it because there was nothing anyone could have done, and he did not want to cause problems.
He hadn't mentioned it because the last time he'd accepted help with a personal issue, he had murdered his captain.
(Jim died in front of him again.)
Spock swallowed. His nails dug into his palms so deeply that he felt the skin rebreak and blood warm his fingertips. They had not even touched on the worst of his encounter with the Seskille, and already he had upset the captain. There was a choking, sick feeling in his throat as it clenched. His lungs spasmed for air despite the deep breath he inhaled. His chest burned, his ribs ached, his side throbbed, and he heard a low buzz in his ears. It had taken less time than he'd expected to ruin things.
Why did he always end up disappointing his friends?
Panic was synonymous to adrenaline as it leaked through his veins, and Spock forced—forced—himself to suppress it. Not here. Not now. Not in front of his crewmates, his captain. Not in front of the ambassador. Breathe. Calm. Control…
Please, control.
(Begging didn't make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)
The mask of discipline felt as if it were starting to slip.
"After… after I observed that you had not experienced the same abnormalities and having heard the rest of the landing party make no mention of it either, I concluded that it was a problem specific to myself. I assure you, Captain, that I would have informed you if I suspected you were in any danger—"
"If I was in any danger?!"
"Jim, we're going to be here a helluva lot longer if you don't stop butting in," McCoy said, looking unimpressed. "Let him finish talking so we can get on with it."
There was a tense silence for exactly four-point-two-six seconds. The captain looked at him stonily but said nothing else. After adverting his eyes to his PADD, of which he had memorized the information thrice over already, Spock spoke once more. It was difficult; the tightness of his throat threatened to choke him.
"We discovered the ruins of the city and confirmed the presence of pergium. During our exploration of the city, I began to feel a rising amount of discomfort in my head; a kind of… pressure. It was becoming increasingly difficult to suppress. After failing to do so, I realized that it was not a physical pain, but a mental one. It was as if a great force were being exerted against my telepathic shields. The captain made the decision to return to the coordinates due to the severity of the weather, but the pain was… difficult to block out." Spock looked through the information in the PADD, although he did not read any of it—couldn't have done so if he tried. He could feel Jim's eyes burning into him like a brand of accusation. "I required a short period of rest to continue onward. After I recovered sufficiently, we continued down the mountainside. The weather conditions worsened, and visibility became limited. It was at this time that I became disoriented from both the pain and snow and, due to my own clumsiness, I fell over the side of the cliff. I—"
"Hold on—no, Bones, stop shushing me—hold on, Spock. You were talking to me at one point, not making any sense. And you weren't just disoriented, you collapsed. That's not something to skip without an explanation." The captain kept his voice carefully toneless, in that specific way he did when he was trying to hide his emotions from an audience. Spock heard them anyways. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you sawsomething else?"
Spock did not allow his own expression to lapse from that stoic, impassive mask, but it was a near thing. Jim's disappointment was a tangible weight in his chest, pressing into his lungs and stealing the breath from him.
"I had other moments of visual discrepancies, yes."
"Well?" Ambassador Hammett burst in, looking annoyed with the back-and-forth. "Are you going to make us guess, Commander?"
Lieutenant Commander Scott made a noise, one that conveyed that he was both at the limit of his patience and also alarmingly close to engaging in physical violence, and Spock saw that the captain rather looked as if he were willing to join him in it. Despite his obvious displeasure at Spock, it appeared that the captain was inclined to put it aside and defend him against a greater foe. The look he shot the ambassador was loathsome.
Spock felt tired—so resigned in a way he could not remember feeling before. Exhaustion tugged at his limbs, at his mind, at his emotional control. He wanted nothing more than to escape to the solitude of his quarters, where he could shut the world out. It was not logical—hiding would do nothing to help him and, in fact, would undoubtedly cause him more problems than it solved—but it was becoming increasingly apparent to him that it might be necessary to avoid an emotional episode. He could not risk having an occurrence like the one he'd had in the supply room, nor even the smaller one he'd had in the hallway. That was unthinkable; unbearable. That it had happened at all was a source of permanent shame, but to allow it to happen in front of others… no. He needed to get control of himself.
Control. Control. Control. But he was so tired; worn thin to the point of feeling abraded and torn. The debrief was going poorly, just as he'd predicted it would. Spock considered his options. He could come up with no logical, justifiable reason to leave without finishing it. To do so illogically was not a possibility that he could consider at any length. This left, to his growing despondence, only gritting his teeth and bearing it as his sole option remaining. His best chance at keeping his dignity was to get through it as quickly as he could, so that perhaps his humiliation might at least be brief.
"I witnessed various memories."
Ambassador Hammett motioned at him in a sudden, abrupt manner, and Spock arched a brow at the incoherent gesture, completely perplexed by it. He glanced at Lieutenant Uhura for possible translation, but she was not looking at him and did not notice. He attempted to catch the gaze of the captain, but Kirk was still staring down the ambassador.
Six-point-five-two-eight seconds later, Ambassador Hammett had apparently reached his tolerance. "My god, man! What kind of memories were these, Commander?"
Spock blinked. "Personal ones," he elucidated, so as to prevent confusion. This, it seemed, was not successful.
"Yes, I got that, thank you! I didn't exactly think they belonged to someone else now, did I?!"
"You are welcome."
The diplomat's thinking was erroneous, as Spock was quite capable of viewing another's memories if he wished to do so. It was hardly out of the realm of possibility to consider that the memories he viewed may not have been his own. He did not say so, understanding that this was not the time to refute that. He was rather more concerned about the alarming red flush that had bloomed in Hammett's face, as well as the stuttered, shaking quality of his voice. Anger or exasperation. Possibly. He could not be certain of it, too unfamiliar with the diplomat to get an accurate read of him.
Spock risked a glance at the doctor and met his eyes across the table with a silent question so as to confirm there was no medical emergency in this. McCoy, rather than appearing concerned, merely looked amused. He pursed his lips, although his smile was hardly concealed by the action. He gave Spock a firm, approving nod, which was then accompanied by a thumbs up.
That was unhelpful, and it did not clarify matters in the slightest.
"He's asking about the specific contents of the memories, Mr. Spock," Uhura supplied with a barely-restrained smile of her own. Her eyes danced with mirth when he looked at her. He did not understand their amusement; he found nothing about this situation particularly amusing.
"Indeed. Once, I experienced a flashback of the Deneva mission. I was blind, and the captain was informing me that he would not accept my resignation. The second was of the captain speaking to me in my quarters about a personal matter. The third was—" Spock took a breath. His lungs burned for air. (Jim died in front of him again.) "—of a combat situation involving myself, Captain Kirk, and Doctor McCoy. Each one appeared to be a fragment of a memory. To my senses, they felt… remarkably real. Indistinguishable from reality. This resulted in a sense of disorientation about my surroundings, so much so that I misjudged my proximity to the edge of the cliff."
"And you didn't speak up to anyone about it? Not even once?" The Ambassador wrote something down, his stylus purposely loud on the PADD. "Any reason why you decided to conceal mission-critical information, Commander?"
The room was silent.
And then, in an overlap of raised, angry voices, it was not.
"You had better have some airtight evidence to back up your accusations—
"Ambassador, I really don't believe that Mr. Spock would—"
"Ye can wipe that smug look right off yer face! Captain, I cannae sit here for a second longer and listen to this pompous windbag, or you are going to have to court martial me—"
"I didn't realize you'd gone and gotten your medical degree, Ambassador!" Doctor McCoy snapped out, voice ringing with the specific commanding authority inherent to a doctor. "We're talking about pain, and that just so happens to fall under my jurisdiction, not yours! Not yours either, Captain. Now look, a Vulcan's got incredible pain tolerance; they can go through pure hell, and you'd never know it just by lookin' at 'em. I could see Spock's brain through his skull down there and he didn't make so much as even a peep about it hurting. So, for a Vulcan to visibly show signs of pain? I'm sure we can all figure out where this is going, and if the Seskille were trying to get in his head—sorry to ruin your grand reveal, Spock—then that kind of pressure on his mind must have been excruciating. He was probably barely even able to put one foot in front of the other at that point, let alone wax poetic to anyone."
The doctor didn't have to stand up to assert himself—he still half-slouched in his chair in the most undignified manner—and yet his expression and voice were direct. He had given no threat of any kind, implied or overt, but the sense of one hung in the room ominously. The ambassador backed down with a soft noise of feigned disinterest. The captain went silent as well, although he aimed a vicious look towards Hammett from across the briefing table.
Spock had felt appreciative of Doctor McCoy before, and the number of occasions were innumerable after so many years, but never before had he felt such a surge of immediate gratitude. He met the doctor's eyes across the table briefly, and he saw a steady warmth in them that disproved the scowl on his face.
"Doctor McCoy is correct. As he… quite emotionally stated, I was indeed compromised at the time. When the Seskille spoke of encountering the other, I did have the capacity to conclude that they were responsible for the pressure in my mind, but the pain was such that verbalizing that theory aloud was not possible. Shortly after, I went over the cliffside, becoming both injured and separated from the captain." Spock spoke evenly, but he did not pause for even a second to allow any interjected comments or questions. Instead, he continued on in a voice that he made certain did not shake. "When I awoke, I was meditating in my quarters aboard the Enterprise. I was then playing chess against a fellow Starfleet Academy cadet. This transitioned to the immediate aftermath of the treatment that temporarily blinded me during the Deneva mission. Each memory felt real while experiencing it, with the same thoughts, reactions, and sensations present as during its true occurrence."
"You couldn't tell that you were in a memory?" the captain asked, his expression distant and unsettled. He was clearly remembering the Deneva mission as well, although Spock knew that it would have been impossible for the captain to forget it. Jim had lost his brother and sister-in-law to the creatures, and he had come close to losing both his nephew and Spock as well.
"Not while reliving it. After a time, I managed awaken and gain awareness of my surroundings. I took stock of my condition, which I deemed critical but not imminently life threatening, and made for the shelter of the ruins. During this, it became apparent that the Seskille were attempting to enter my mind rather… insistently, and they did not appear to understand that my mental shielding was meant to keep foreign contact out. Once I reached shelter and was able to triage my injuries to the best of my ability, I entered my mind to assess the situation. The Seskille—" Spock took another breath that did not make it into his lungs. His chest throbbed, burned, spasmed for air. Control. Control. Control. "—likewise entered my mind and we… merged together."
(It was blending together. Spock. The Seskille. It was all blending together, and he could not make sense of it any longer. There was no separation. No single entity.)
(They forced him to feel. The confusion, the grief, the horror, the nervousness, the pleasure, the tenderness, the amusement. All of the emotions from all of those moments, stacked together and crammed against him violently. He could not block them out. He could not suppress them beneath his sea of sand. He could only sit there and take it.)
"Spock?"
Spock blinked and looked up. The captain was looking at him with worried, concerned eyes.
"My apologies. The Seskille and I endeavored to communicate with one another, although there was an initial difficulty. They reviewed multiple memories of mine, and I sensed that they did not understand what it was they were seeing. When I spoke to them through our link, they did not comprehend. From my observations, they do not appear to understand words, language, or audible sound. It was only after I began to utilize my memories as a form of visual communication that they responded in turn and a rudimentary exchange took place. This continued until you arrived, Captain."
At his side, Lieutenant Uhura was also taking quick notes, although Spock knew she had every justification for doing so. As Chief Communications Officer, language was her specialty; she would logically find the information on the Seskille's unique form of communication fascinating. Once, he would have even felt similar feelings of intrigue and curiosity. Spock almost regretted that he could not transfer the experience to her, as she would no doubt be far more agreeable to the exchange of mindscapes than he had been. Of course, he also knew better than to wish that kind of violation on anyone else.
Doctor McCoy still watched him closely, eyes piercing, and expression closed off. Spock wished he knew what the man wanted, so that he might provide it to him and give him cause to finally look elsewhere.
"Mr. Spock?" Uhura looked up from her PADD, smiling at him in a manner he knew was meant to be commiserating. He gratefully allowed his attention to be diverted from the doctor, the captain, the ambassador. "If I may, you said the Seskille were speaking to you… but we never saw any lifeforms within range on the tricorders. Just the landing party. If they were there, why didn't they show up? What are they, exactly?"
That was considerably easier to talk about, and Spock gave Lieutenant Uhura a steady nod.
"I cannot provide exacts, as my knowledge of them remains rudimentary. They are unlike any lifeform we have ever encountered, Lieutenant. From my observations, the Seskille are a species of metaphysical energy that communicates entirely through emotional transference. They are not wholly a hivemind, yet they also lack individuality. They are benevolent, curious, and highly intelligent. They do not possess physical forms, although they once did." Spock steepled his fingers. "Bear in mind, I base much of this information off conjecture, glimpsed only in brief flashes and arrived at logically. My theory is therefore incomplete and cannot be considered exact by any means. Based on this limited observation, countless millions of years ago, their species evolved to form a kind of communal telepathic mindscape. Through it, they shared emotional transference to such a degree that even I cannot entirely comprehend. It… became more real to them than the physical, tangible world they existed in. Over time, they came to prefer it, and found the emotional idealism impossible to separate from. The Seskille abandoned their physical forms in favor of that mindscape. Their cities were left to ruin, and their bodies were left to wither and die. The entire species of went extinct within a matter of days.
There was horrified silence for approximately ten seconds.
"They just let themselves die?" Doctor McCoy asked, obviously appalled at the idea.
"Affirmative. I do not believe they felt any regrets about the decision to do so—on the contrary, they appeared to celebrate the act. It has been so long since they had physical bodies that they no longer remember having one at all. They seemed… fascinated by concept of it, although it was equally clear that they did not comprehend what one was like. Whatever physical form they once possessed, I do not believe it would have been recognizable to us as life as we know it. They were not humanoid, nor were they organic in a way we could relate to. They had no understanding of common organic elements such as ears, eyes, sounds, or words."
(The Seskille did not stop. They did not understand the word stop. They did not fully understand what words even were.)
(There was no understanding to the words he'd tried, and there would be no further understanding to any words he would try.)
(Begging didn't make any difference, he thought distantly. Begging was useless.)
"Can you clarify what you mean by words, Mr. Spock?" Lieutenant Uhura asked curiously. "They didn't seem to have any issue when I spoke with them; they were repetitive and often echoed the questions back to us, but they spoke fluently enough."
"I am not the first mind the Seskille has… contacted in such a manner. To some degree or another, I believe they are able to passively read even psi-null species as well, or at least the emotional inflection present in human voices. I hypothesize that what you hear as words are merely signals compiled from the various minds they have observed," Spock said as evenly as he could. His stomach clenched at the thought of that observation. It had felt violating, sickening, invading. He had felt scoured and gutted and exposed like a raw nerve, and still they had watched and observed him. "They form sentences together based on emotional context; they can determine when you are asking them a question, can detect the emotion of inquiry, and they respond with the voices of memories, other questions, other contexts, without necessarily understanding them. I'm afraid I cannot be more precise at this time."
"That's…. certainly something," the captain said, appearing unnerved by the idea. "Something we definitely haven't come across before. I felt them too for a moment, and they were… a lot to handle. Extremely powerful, extremely intelligent, and extremely alien. I felt almost like an insect—a well-cared for insect, but an insect all the same. You had all that in your head for hours?"
"It was a fascinating, if overwhelming, experience."
"All this is well and good, of course, and I'm sure it is, as you say, fascinating," Hammett said in a disinterested tone, as if he were exasperated with the conversation taking place, "but I'm more interested in what you discussed with them. The mission? The mining agreement? That's the entire reason we came here, after all. What did they think when you asked them about that?"
Spock felt his stomach plummet; a cold, icy stone sinking into the core of him. There was an itch beneath his skin, static and fuzzing with white noise. His fingers trembled and he casually placed them under the table to hide them from sight. His ribs hurt from where he had broken them, his skull from where he had shattered it. Psychosomatic pain: it was not real. Logically, he understood that. But logic did not stop the sensation of his chest creaking when he inhaled a breathless, suffocating breath. The room tunneled away from him…
Control. Control. Control.
He blinked.
"I did not ask them."
"You… didn't ask them?"
"No."
Another flush of red stole across the ambassador's face, his expression growing irritated and, oddly, anxious. Spock distantly observed the dark circles beneath his eyes, and suspected that the ambassador was, to borrow the human expression, in over his head. Starfleet Command had a great deal of invested interest in this mission, and it had clearly not gone as Hammett had hoped.
"You didn't ask them?!"
"He just said that he didn't," the captain snapped, clearly at the limit of his patience. "Asking again isn't going to get you a different answer! I daresay that Spock was a bit too busy down there to do your job for you!"
Hammett didn't back down though. "Too busy doing what? He was down there for almost six hours!"
"Too busy dying! His head was cracked clean open, you—"
"Captain," Spock interrupted hurriedly, attempting to avoid a violent diplomatic crisis. "I do not believe the ambassador meant to suggest—"
"I'm suggesting that you had all that time, and you somehow didn't think to, not even once, ask them about the mining rights?" Hammett's voice was too loud for the size of the room, and Spock repressed a wince. His head hurt. "I know you were hurt, and I have nothing but sympathy for you, I do! But that didn't appear to stop you from chit-chatting to them about other things! In all that time, you couldn't slip in just a little mention of our only mission objective?"
"You don't have to answer that, Spock. Hammett, I've had just about en—"
"Captain. We were not chit-chatting, Ambassador," Spock said evenly. Blood dripped from his palms, and he pressed them into the black fabric of his uniform pants. "Communication with the Seskille was largely one-sided, at least initially. I was not immediately receptive to their telepathic contact, and I attempted to block them from my mind. This ultimately proved to be unsuccessful. After I determined that expending further effort was an illogical waste of resources, I eventually allowed them entry. It was only then that I was able to respond to their inquiries. Much of that time, as you say, was not spent in active communication with them."
"First contact is your job, Commander Spock. You mean to tell me that they were practically knocking at your door, and you just ignored them?! It's no wonder they'll hardly talk to any of us now, with how much you must have offended the poor things! Your mission was to communicate with them, and from what I'm hearing, you not only refused to do so, but you wasted time that could have been better spent on the objective!"
(He had begged and pleaded. It hadn't worked and trying to make it stop only served to worsen the pain. Pain to the point of wanting to die. He couldn't take it. He couldn't stand it. He had given in, surrendered, and the pain had ended.)
(They could take whatever it was they wanted from him. They could take anything and everything if that was their desire, as many times over as they wished.)(Assault had never felt so good…)
"Time would not have been beneficial in this matter." His voice sounded hollow, empty, even to his own ears. Like a void had opened somewhere inside of him and echoed out dull justifications and excuses. The room drifted away from him like a hazy fog. Control. Control. Control… but he could not find it. "They do not understand words, Ambassador, only emotions. As a Vulcan, my attempts at communicating with them were logically complicated by my inability to emotionally connect in a manner that they would understand—"
"Ahh," Ambassador Hammett adopted a false tone of dawning realization, one that was entirely too exaggerated to be anything but feigned. "I see. So it wasn't that you refused to carry out the mission, it was that you were entirely inadequate for it to begin with."
There was a shocked pause, and then the room erupted.
"Ye go and say that again, laddie—"
"You're on thin ice, mister! I'm sure that Starfleet Command would be interested to know what—"
"That's enough!" The captain was on his feet in an instant, and although his voice was not as loud as the others', it was so commandingly authoritative that it echoed through the room like whipcrack. There was a dangerous, venomous expression on his face, his eyes bright with barely restrained rage so sharp as to be cutting. "You are out of line, Ambassador!I will not stand for that kind of sneering ridicule on my ship—not for a second, understand? Not for all the valuable rocks in the galaxy! And I don't care who you work for, or what your title is, you make another comment like that and I'm confining you to quarters until we reach the nearest Starbase! Do we have an understanding?"
There was silence for a long moment.
"Perfectly, Captain." The ambassador cleared his throat, a steady flush rising up his throat. "No further questions, Commander."
"Lieutenant Uhura, have Linguistics examine each and every one of the Seskille's messages for any kind of pattern. I want a better way to communicate with them by tomorrow."
"I've already put in the request, Captain. With Mr. Spock's analysis, I'm hopeful we can clear up any misunderstandings." Uhura said coolly, fingers clenched tightly to her PADD. She was watching Hammett with narrow eyes. "If you can spare me on the bridge, I'll see to the project personally."
"Granted." The captain was still on his feet, palms flat against the table. He hadn't looked away from the ambassador for an instant, hazel eyes burning like cold fire. "All of you are dismissed. This meeting is over—no. Oh not you, Ambassador. No, you are going to stay right where you are. I want to have a word with you. Everyone else clear the room. Hammett, you sit down."
Spock stood sedately, folding his hands to rest gently at the low of his back. He offered a polite nod to the captain, to the ambassador, to his peers. His relief at the conclusion of the debrief was drowned out by the immediate understanding that his continued outward display of composure was time sensitive, and he was rapidly approaching the extent of his ability. His mask of indifference was splintering at the edges, chipping away to reveal an erratic and disjointed underside.
"Bones, can you—"
He did not hear what the captain wanted with the doctor—could not hear it. There was a rush of blood in his ears; an audible roar that deafened him to all other auditory input. Spock exited the room in a clipped walk. His head spun. His ribs ached. He could not breathe. He could not focus. The ability to concentrate was slithering away. It took intentional, dedicated effort to put one foot in front of the other steadily; his legs felt as if they were becoming numb. His fingers had already done so. His skin itched, like sparks of lightning were tingling just beneath the surface.
Control. Control. Control.
The turbolift doors closed around him, shielding him. He leaned against the wall there, gripping the control handle with hands that were shaking. He left smears of green where he touched, but he did not feel any pain. He did not feel his body any longer at all; it was somewhere else. Disconnected from his own mind, of which he felt he had an even less tenable grasp on.
"Deck Five."
He thought he spoke, but he could not be sure. He did not hear his own voice; merely a dull, low noise. The turbolift moved. It opened.
Control. Control. Control.
"Commander Spock," Crewman Lind nodded to him politely as they passed in the hallway, respectfully moving to the side to allow him to pass. Spock inclined his head to him in return but did not respond. He did not trust his voice.
Control…
Control, please, control. You are Vulcan. This behavior is illogical. You are in control of your emotions
.
He was not, though. Spock could feel it slipping from him, like water draining through his numb fingers. His breath shuddered, hitching in his chest with a burning, smothering kind of suffocation. Control, but he was not in control, and every step, every heartbeat, took him further and further from it. His mind spiraled from his grip. The hall tilted, threatening to buckle his legs from beneath him. No. He could not give in to this feeling. Not where others could see him.
His head throbbed at the force of which he held his mask together. Only a few steps…
Spock passed the captain's quarters. He almost passed his own. Darkness edged into the peripherals of his vision. He could not breathe—but that was irrational, because he could feel his chest rising. He could feel the air enter his throat. He could hear the wheeze—
Control…
(Spock hated himself in that moment. He hated himself.)
The muted darkness of his room was soothing after the bright glare of the hallway. Spock waited for the doors to close behind him before he softly instructed the computer to set his privacy controls to their highest setting. His voice was a feeble, frail sound, trembling reedy and thin even through the audible rush in his ears. He hovered indecisively for a moment, eyes flicking from his meditation spot to his desk to his bed, before his stomach lurched. A sour, unpleasant feeling churned in him.
Calmly, stiffly, he walked into the adjacent lavatory. There, he idled for approximately three-point-four-one seconds, staring blankly at the wall in front of him. His breath was loud in the small room.
Control…
Spock bent double and vomited.
As always, thank you so much for reading!
So, Hammett is in rare form and on his bullshit again, and it was so enjoyable to write. This chapter went through a few iterations, and I ended up having to cut it in half due to the length. The unclipped version would have been over 17k words, and I felt it was a bit much to read through in one sitting. However, that also means that most of the next chapter is written already, and I'm hopeful that I will get it out sooner! I'm terribly excited for what is to come!
Vulcan:
K'oh-nar — The fear of emotional vulnerability and emotional exposure.
Limein — Mask; a covering worn on the face to conceal one's identity.
Ka'athyra — Lute/Lyre: stringed musical instrument like an electric harp; propped on the shoulder
Tra-wan svai — Cumulus Flower; the fluffy, cloud-like flowers that bloom from a specific native Vulcan shrub.