Short A/N: Yes, yes, I know.  I must have, at least once, screwed up the timeline a bit.  So sue me, Spock did it too.  *pouts*



The Kypros-born once blamed me
For praying this word:
I want

Love shook my heart like wind
On a mountain punishing oak trees.

Someone, I tell you, in another time
Will remember us.

~Psapfo (Sappho)


The First Year:
There was something that was almost… disturbing (he supposed it was the right word, and he didn’t want to dwell on the instinctive need to find a kinder one) about the fact that he had never been more comfortable inside his own skin than he was at this moment.
Battle, of course, was always exhilarating.  It did not even constitute as an emotional response to find it so.  Endorphins rushed through the body.  The finer details deemed worth living for were instinctively sharpened.  Minds automatically focused on the present, on each individual minute.  
But this was different than any other time he had fought for his own life.  Against his back, he could feel the tensed and ready muscles of Captain Kirk’s, could hear the bright, nearly feral grin in his voice as he said pleasantly “Well, Mr. Spock, we appear to be in some deep shit.”
Spock quirked a brow even though Jim couldn’t see it and replied with a cool “Indeed, Captain.”
Something distinctly unpleasant and somehow very much not unpleasant seemed to lurch in him when the fervid creatures did attack, screaming their piercing, ringing notes and lifting their primitive weapons, blunt harsh painful things rising in an unbroken circle against Captain Kirk and Spock in the center.  When they dove into wordless action.
And it was as if they moved in tandem, as if each motion had been perfectly planned and yet they certainly hadn’t planned “What to do if we’re attacked by religiously crazed semi intelligent beings we didn’t even know existed.”
It was… disarming.  Yes, that was the word.  Something dangerous was happening, he was becoming too comfortable, he was becoming too…
Too what, exactly?
Spock passed it off as illogical and aimless philosophical wonderings.  Insecurities his human half was trying to press into all of him.  He didn’t dwell on it.


The Second Year:
Despite the fact that Captain Kirk had started asking Spock to please call him ‘Jim’ from their very first meeting, it wasn’t until the second year of their mission that Spock used the name completely by accident, and not just to satiate an illogical argument; a waste of time; from going on.
Jim didn’t seem to notice it at all, which made sense.  In that moment, there were other things that probably mattered more to him than Spock accidentally letting the uniformity of his speech slip.
“Jim, please, do not loose consciousness.”
His own voice sounded strained as he spoke, pale hands pressing down on the gaping mouth of a wound on Jim’s side, blood and flesh like a split fruit, the deep red of it blooming through the blue of his own uniform.  A swelling cloud of dark purple under his own white fingers if he squinted.  It took him a moment, oddly, to realize that it was indeed his own voice.  The cool calmness of it collected and yet still bordering the edge of something chaotic.  
Jim –Captain Kirk- let out a sound that must have been a laugh, though Spock could find nothing at all even remotely humorous in what was happening.
“Don’t worry, Spock.  I’m not going to die.”
“No, sir, you are not.”  Spock said flatly.  For the first time, he didn’t try to think of the logical reason for this assessment- there was none.  They were virtually stranded, communications failed, fire still closing in on the brush, and with only one working phaser.  Not that either of them would have fired it, even if one of the clawed, vicious creatures had sprang up behind them at this instant.  Ji- Captain Kirk looked as if he was having trouble seeing any detail in the world at all.  His eyes had a glazed, milked over look as they flickered- fevered and drugged with pain.  And Spock… well, he was reasonably preoccupied with saving Jim’s life.  Because more often than not, it seemed to be his job to save Jim’s life.  Or, at times, stand by on the sidelines as Jim threw around mortality and the looming prospect of death like it was all a kind of sick game.
And, most recently, watch the gold of Jim’s uniform be interrupted with a small explosion of red as the other man leapt before him, one hand reaching behind and pressing Spock backwards as a claw split the flesh of his side.
“I’m not… you’re with me… and that’s not how it goes.”
A pause, breathing labored, and Spock spoke in a voice that seemed too clipped as it came from his own mouth.  “How does- how will it go, Jim?”
It was very easy to say the name now.  Simple, really.  He wondered why he hadn’t just done it from the beginning.  They must have spent a collective amount of at least an hour arguing briefly at different intervals about the appropriateness of Spock calling him ‘Jim.’  It was a wasted hour.
Jim didn’t respond, though.  His breathing was heavy, the sound of its rising and falling was loud in the too-still air.  


The Third Year:
“You are, yet again, attempting to affix human emotions to non-human life.  Normally you are quite accepting of the many differences among the species, Jim.  Excited by them, even- in a scientific way.  In this particular aspect however, you are forever unconvinced-”
“It’s not a human emotion though, Spock!  Love is universal.  It’s the one thing, the singular thing that is, believe me.”  Jim turned from the open book he was holding delicately in his hands, lifted his face from where it had been, about an inch above the old text, and stared straight into Spock’s eyes as though to accentuate his point with the glance.
“In previous debates, you have always at least attempted to prove yourself.  I have yet to hear any proof on your part as to why you feel you are correct.”
Jim now turned entirely away from the book, the flicker of a smile flashing across his face.  Spock was beginning to learn that this rarely boded well.  There was something about the smile though that-
Spock stopped that line of thought, not even dwelling on how it could possibly turn out.
“What is your argument, then?  Are you saying that Vulcans don’t feel love?”
There was half a beat at this where there was silence.  A very short pause, though both of them felt it.  “Love is an emotion.  As you know-”
“Yes, yes, Vulcans suppress their emotions.  But that’s exactly what I’m saying.  Love would be one of the emotions you suppress, so being Vulcan doesn’t mean that you don’t love, it means that you suppress love when you feel it, don’t you?”
“This would be the point, indeed.  Which means,” Spock continued, in a tone that would have sounded harsh and degrading to any outsider, though Jim Kirk didn’t bat an eyelash.   “That Vulcans do not feel love.  Vulcans do not suppress the actions that such emotions would perhaps inspire or propel, but emotion itself, at the very base.  It is not ‘one of the emotions suppressed,’ in that way.  Emotions cannot be chosen as ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ ‘suppressed’ or ‘free.’  Vulcans do not feel love simply because it falls into the category of ‘emotion’, and emotions as a whole are then not felt by Vulcans.”
Jim rose from the chair entirely, hands thrown out on either side.  He seemed to be aggravated, but he was still smiling, something odd in his face that Spock could not place.  “Of course, I mean, that makes sense.  To suppress them all, the good and the bad.  There’s an old, book, ‘The Giver,’ that shows a human civilization that suppressed both good and bad emotions as well, to keep the peace.  They used a pill, though.”
The way he said it –almost bitterly exhausted- made Spock think it might have been an insult.  He raised a single brow.  “Quite a logical choice.  I have no doubt you knew I’d believe this to be true.  It is also quite unlike most novels you have enjoyed in the past, Captain.”
“Yes, yes, in the end these children escape all the logic, you would hate it and Mcoy would love it, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make!”  He had walked close across the room, and in the moment of annoyance Spock saw he believed for half an instant that Jim might hit him in a flash of fury.  He didn’t though, choosing instead to prowl rather angrily in the opposite direction before turning again to face Spock.  “They had to suppress all of it- they couldn’t love, not even their own husbands and wives and children because it’s… it’s like a gateway drug, I suppose.  Loving in itself has to do with every good emotion in the book.  A person or creature-”
“Or creature?”
“-or creature will feel elated, thrilled, gifted!”  Jim threw his arms up in the air, his face flushed as he grinned a lopsided, dopey grin.  He should have looked ridiculous.  “They’ll want the other person by their side, desire them, body and soul!  Everything’s harder to suppress once there’s love, and I get that.”  Jim stepped forwards, willing him to understand something that Jim seemed to find obvious in this.  “And then, of course, there can’t just be those.  Everything gets sharper.  It also means that a person has a mad power over you.  Can flay you open with the right-phrased insult, can make you worry like mad and can make you angry as hell.  And then, of course, loves only ever end badly.  Death or separation, it’s always one of those.  And both of those have grief woven in with them.  I understand that, but I’ve always thought it was worth it, feeling every bright part to be felt in the universe even if it ends with all the darkest parts of the soul-”
“Do not touch my hands.”
His voice was so quick it could have been a shout, and Jim’s own hands actually jerked upwards, surprised.  For a moment, he had reached down, clasped Spock’s hand in both of his own and shook it slightly, as if to add to his own argument.  To make a point.  For a moment, neither of them had seemed to notice at all.  Jim had continued speaking, and Spock hadn’t moved in the slightest.  His eyes had widened marginally, but he hadn’t moved.
It was a sudden break, the sharp stab of the sentence as if it was a dirty accusation, and though it was simple and spoken in the even, emotionless voice Spock normally strove to use in conversation, the words seemed laced with disgust.
Jim’s own hands were in the air on either side of his face, as if he was surrendering.  His brow was now quirked in confusion, one corner of his mouth twitched upwards as if expecting the other shoe to drop any second and for all of this to be joke.  “Eh… sorry?”  He said.
Spock nodded briefly, though he seemed distracted.  When his eyes met Jim’s, his jaw was tight with concentration, though the stare was blank.  The focus was inwards.  
“… anyway,”  Jim said after a moment, letting his hands drop.  “What I mean is, love isn’t just some flippant human emotion used to amuse us!  Do you know what people have done for love?  I heard a story once of a mother who was able to lift and entire car after it fell from a hanger onto her child.  The extinct Terran animal the wolf would die for its pack.  And, only the head of the pack mates, and in one study each scientist expected the pack leader to choose the healthiest female.  He didn’t, he chose one with a limp, the one he had spent the most time with thus far, for no logical reasons at all.  Love itself is the glue that holds every creature, including humans, together-”
“If the wolf had chosen the healthiest female, that would have benefited the race as a whole.”
“That doesn’t matter!  Love is a failure of logic, sure, but-”
“It seems we disagree too thoroughly on this.”  Spock said evenly.  
Jim blinked.  “Yes.”  He said.  “That would be why we’re able to argue about it, Spock.  That’s the point.”  
“No.  Arguments are only ever useful when one or both of the participating parties remains partially unsure.  Otherwise, it is less an argument or debate and more a simple shouting of views.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have a few experiments that require my attention.”
“Spock!  I’m sorry about grabbing your hand, really-”
“I thank you for your apology, but it is unneeded.  It was a simple mistake for a human to make.  Your hands are, after all… well.”
Spock left the room rather hurriedly, leaving a thoroughly confused Jim with the vague notion that he had just witnessed Spock babbling.  

Later on, Spock would stop in his work and lift his own hand for a moment, stare at the fingers and finally fully address (even within the privacy of his own head) that yes, perhaps there was… something happening.  Something dangerous.  
Something that was better left ignored.  Because he was lucky in his life and his friendships.  Very, very lucky.  Even if guilt went with the very acknowledgment of his luck, he could see it.



The Fourth Year:
“Let me see if I’m understanding you here,” Jim said, leaning forwards, fingers still loosely holding a chess piece and that ever-so-dangerous glint of curiosity shining in his eyes.  “It doesn’t matter that something doesn’t actually have a mind.  You could take just any object- like, a rock or something- and meld with it and see all the memories despite the fact that it doesn’t have a mind to have memories?”
Spock considered this for a moment, quirking an eyebrow at the unwarranted interest.  “Yes.  In theory, I could.  Though I must admit, I do not see how melding with a rock would be necessary or even interesting.”
For whatever reason, this made a flicker of a smile flash across Jim’s face.  “I’m not saying it’s necessary.  But wouldn’t it be a little interesting?  I mean, it seems to me as if you’re saying you lend your own mind over to an inanimate object and let its boring little inanimate object non-life have thought for a moment.  I am kind of curious as to what a rock would think when given the opportunity.”
“I do not believe that is what happens.”  Spock said, “A rock would not have the capacity to think, and I do not ‘lend my mind’ to give it the opportunity within a meld.  It does, however, have what could be called ‘memories.’  In all likelihood, these thoughtless memories would be what I would see within a meld.”
“Huh.”  Jim said.  He was still smiling, though Spock could find nothing that Jim might find particularly humorous in the situation.
It made him a bit suspicious, frankly.
“Try the chess set.”  Jim said abruptly, gesturing downwards, still holding a rook in his hand.  
One eyebrow rose.  “You have not yet made your move.”  He said, staring rather pointedly at the rook in Jim’s hand.
“I know.  I’m actually continuing the conversation this time, not being random.  I mean, try the chess set.  A meld.  I’d like to know what it thinks of us.”
“I have already pointed out that it would not-”
“Its memories, then.  I’d like to hear about the chess set’s memories of us.”  With that final remark, Jim decidedly placed the rook down in the second lowest level of the board, approximately three moves away from capturing his queen, if Jim were to go by the obvious route.  Which he probably wouldn’t.
Ignoring the much more compelling game and suppressing a sigh, Spock lifted his hand over the board, shutting his eyes and concentrating.  It wouldn’t be that difficult- the chess set was used quite often and had very recent memories of-
Fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, fingers, moving, fingers…
Spock practically jerked back in his seat, eyes still shut, concentrating on mundane things- the buzz of the lights, the very distant hum of the engine, the absolute darkness of the inside of his eyelids.
“Spock?  Spock, are you alright?”  He heard one of the accusing chess pieces tumble over, the rolling of it once it landed on the level below.   
When he opened his eyes, there was a hand waving in front of his face, and Jim was leaning over the chessboard looking very concerned.
“I have regained composure.”  Spock said flatly.  
After a few more rather pointless assurances that yes, he was fine, they slowly got back to the game, arranging the pieces the way they had been before.  Jim ended up moving his own queen instead, putting him in check for one brief, surprising moment before he was able to avoid checkmate, captured the rook, put Jim in check for another brief spell, and the game thusly continued.  
During one particularly long silence as Spock considered his next move, Jim spoke almost hesitantly.  “So… what was it?”
“You will have to clarify your meaning, Captain.”  Spock said, making a move that silenced Jim for the space of about thirty seconds as he worked out a new strategy.  Or, possibly, decided on making an absolutely random move that he knew would confuse Spock.
“I mean the meld.  With the chess set.  You jumped back so suddenly, and you had the weirdest expression on your face.”  Jim said thoughtfully, ignoring the blank, maybe slightly reproachful look Spock shot him at the word ‘expression.’  “It looked kind of like this.”  Jim said, and promptly twisted his face, a combination of shock and something along the lines of guilt flashing for a moment before Jim looked at him expectantly.  Perhaps… too expectantly.
Spock put Jim in check for a third time.  Jim evaded it.  “It was simply…  it was the memory of us playing chess.  I do not know why this would interest you.  It is the same memories we ourselves have of the games only without opinions or any type of planning or strategy, simply the memory of pieces moving across the board without any recognition as to what it might mean.”
“Really?”  Jim said conversationally, “Because it looked like you’d accidentally seen someone in the nude or something.”
Spock diplomatically ignored that comment and willed himself to not think at all about the meld.  Ever.  
Chess was, after all, quite interesting enough without that particular aspect of it.



The Fifth Year and After:
There was no such thing as regret, near the end.  There couldn’t have been.
Loving meant, at least on some level, confessing a rather thrilling sense of failure.  Spock was not emotionless.  He didn’t want to be entirely emotionless anymore.  But this didn’t happen because he granted himself permission.  Even if nothing had ever happened and he had gone forever not knowing what it truly meant to abandon every sense of feeling and humanity, this simple feeling would have still taken up residence in all that he was.  He felt it, a current of change down to his bones, something as simple as breathing.  He’d never go as far as to reveal all of it to the universe blatantly and clearly, and he didn’t need to.
Perhaps that was the thrilling part, underneath the heavy weight of a failure he still tried to push away.  That he didn’t need to say anything.  He didn’t need anything at all, anything more.  It wasn’t even that he was settling for something less.  This was simply the way it was.  Just as terrifying as it had been nearly five years ago, the brimming of something dangerous.  Something thrilling.  That dual hit of emotion he no longer tried to pin down with an exact name, something he didn’t try to suppress anymore.
Spock went on with his life, after the five-year mission.  Jim got on with his life as well.  Not without a certain amount of regret, of course.
No matter what it was they did, however, they always seemed to end up back in The Enterprise.  It was as if that part of his life couldn’t let go of its hold on the rest of him.  As if more of his life had been lived in five years than could be lived in the many decades to come.  All of them always ended up drawn back to the ship, remembering their old roles as easy as it was to remember to breath.  
It didn’t make any kind of logical sense, but it was true nonetheless.  Perhaps he shouldn’t try to find logic here at all.  This was, after all, a thoroughly emotional affair.
So they did their best to move on in their lives, to be perfectly honest.  Spock lived for science, for Vulcan.  Still found himself in space more often than on any kind of land, finding it quite impossible to avoid rather extreme amounts of chaos, but knew this was as close as he’d ever really get to settling down.  Jim actually retired, though those who knew him always mentioned it with a rather bemused expression on their faces, as if it was some kind of elaborate joke.  
Jim saw a variety of women over the years, continued his own unofficial tradition, and fell fast and hard in love for a day, a week.  Sometimes for a month or two, even.  Rarely for longer.  Spock met a few of them, and despite the fact that he was comfortable and never wished for anything other than his own life as it was, there seemed to be something cold between him and them.  
They would watch whenever he and Jim and Mcoy would talk, Jim laughing and grinning and Dr. Mcoy snorting and making snide, amused, affectionate comments.  They always seemed aware then of the fact that they were outsiders, and he had caught one particularly beautiful dark haired woman nearly glaring at him once when Jim spoke to him, leaning too close and speaking in a voice that seemed almost warm in the air between them, something breaking across his eyes as he revealed more of himself for the moment.  He never looked at anyone else that way.  It made something that felt both ‘pleased’ and ‘guilty’ rise up in his chest.  Illogically, of course.  
(And in turn, though he’d never admit it and he’d never let himself spend a minute in self-pity when he was, honestly, fine with his life as it was, he would stare whenever Jim slipped his fingers between any of theirs.)
Like everything else besides the enterprise and those five golden years however, all of this strange normality eventually slipped away for good.  All three of them seemed unable to fully escape their old jobs, and none of them could find the energy or motive to truly care.  
Crazy, familiar chaos carried on until the end.
And honestly, he couldn’t regret anything.  Neither one of them ever made a single move, and he couldn’t even begin to regret it.


The End:
Crushing pain
But no, he was in his office
He was alone
Alone as he always knew he would be
And despite the fact that never,
Never
Had either of them ever put a name on anything
Whatever they were broke away

He hadn’t expected to feel this when Jim had first ‘died.’  Or perhaps he did, in some secret corner of his mind, but not enough to be surprised when he felt almost nothing that first time.  Or ‘nothing’ compared to the second, anyway.
He had went to see the gaping hole, filled in with glass window so viewers could look on into space, a dull golden plaque with Jim’s full name carved in bulky, harsh letters as though screaming each syllable.  JAMES TIBERIOUS KIRK.
He felt both.  (being sucked into space, the connection for whatever reason wrapping around him and choking him, refusing to vanish.  Being crushed, much too far away and alone.  Felt everything around him snap and break.)  Expected the second, much more vivid choking stutters of a shattering bond to be a dream.  Wanted it to be impossible, because…
Something that had always seemed like part of him -as simply as his own bones under his flesh- made itself known in his body.  Made his blood heavy with the perfect, appalling fact, threaded through his skin and made him feel as though a part of him had been split off, made him feel as though he’d been pulled apart, made him feel, feel, feel.  Always made him feel too much.  Why should it change now?!


After The End:
In the end, they took what Jim Kirk was a turned it into an idea.  Who he was got lost in his face, in his legend, in all that he had become.  These people didn’t know that he could be both brilliant and idiotic in the same moment, the same sentence.  They didn’t know that he could get caught up in his own words; end up making long, eloquent speeches, eyes glazed over as if cherishing the ideas themselves.  They didn’t know he had smirked at Mcoy’s jokes, a grin that somehow made him untouchable in an argument.  They didn’t know he had looked at Spock as though each detail of him was something exquisite.
They didn’t know that he sometimes took life as a drug; let himself walk the fine line between heroic and suicidal as he tried to reassure himself he had survived this far.  They knew he would give his life for anyone he gave a damn about without a second thought, though.  And with that, they claimed to love him.
In the end, that was what seemed to matter the most, after all the immediate, unbearable pain had become unremarkable- just as terrible as it had in the first moment, but simply another part of himself now.  It mattered that someone who had evaded any exact ideas and adjectives had been pinned down as something greater than man.  They took him as a face, a hero, an idol, and in death he abandoned his own humanity.  
Spock could only sit back and watch with something too muted to be real horror as each shameful thing about him was forgotten, each good thing bloated until he became something for everyone else to live up to.  They forgot who Jim Kirk was, in the end.  
Picard sent him a private message, but he only read it after the dream of the supposedly imagined “second” death; after he had caught the story in a news article, only paying attention to it because of the headline in bold, the familiar name.
THE LEGENDARY CAPTAIN KIRK RISES AND DIES AGAIN
He had thought at first it was only a metaphor to catch attention, that it was just another part of the idea Jim had become to the rest of the world.

If it had been he lost in some distant corner of the universe, Spock knew that Jim would have found him.  There was no logical reason for him to know this at all.  Perhaps it was intuition.
But he knew that’s what would have happened.  Because Jim had found the split off pieces of him- body and soul, and had brought him back from death.  Because Jim refused to give up, even when it seemed as if everything had been lost.  Because Jim was Jim, and not giving up even after you had felt someone die, felt their very soul ripped from reality, damn it all if something like a tether to them constricted your lungs… sounded exactly like the kind of crazy, stupid, illogical thing Jim would have done for him.
But it had not been Spock who had been trapped, who had died alone, no matter how much he wished it had been.  It had been Jim.  And Spock had given up just because everything in existence had told him Jim was dead.
And he knew it was illogical.  That it was emotional, but in this part of his life it seemed rather idiotic to even try to claim that there had ever been no emotions.  But it was always because of this, because Spock had given up where Jim wouldn’t have that Jim had died alone.  

So he was selfish again.  Even if it wasn’t really Jim, his Jim, his universe’s Jim, whatever.  He had saved a stranger in a cave who had worn Jim’s face.  He had given the universe a second chance.  And even though the worry was a raw, insuppressible thing: that he had erased everything in his own universe for this new one; he still fought on.  
He was more tired than it seemed possible to be, a constant exhaustion that no amount of sleep would rid him of.  But it didn’t matter.  Even if it was so very, very far from the same, he would stop this… version of himself from surrendering to logic so completely.  
He would not fail this time.

~The End~