Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

* * *

Gaze no more in the bitter glass
The demons, with their subtle guile,
Lift up before us when they pass,
Or only gaze a little while;
For there a fatal image grows
That the stormy night receives,
Roots half hidden under snows,
Broken boughs and blackened leaves.
For all things turn to barrenness
In the dim glass the demons hold.

from "The Two Trees"
William Butler Yeats

* * *

[stardate 9812.7 ...recording]

It has been years since I kept a log of this nature...years since Starfleet regulations required it of me. I confess I am reluctant to question too closely my motivation for doing so now.

I fear I would not be...entirely comfortable with the answer.

McCoy, my old nemesis, would likely find no small measure of personal satisfaction in this admission. No doubt he would seize upon whatever weakness he might perceive in such a statement, and I would be forced, quite logically, to dispute his analysis of my motives. Once, I might have attempted to formulate some acceptable explanation for making a recording no one shall ever hear.

There can be no logic to my certainty that the time for those debates has passed; nonetheless, I shall never dispute philosophical differences with Leonard McCoy in quite the same way again.

Our ever-tolerant mediator is dead.

. . .

There. I have said it.

. . .

Four hours and some minutes since I received the personal communique from Commander Chekov. Still I can see the holographic image of him in the room; still I can hear his voice.

Startling, how much he has aged, though there is still something of the earnest nineteen-year-old in him. Pavel Chekov was little more than a child the first time I saw him on the bridge of the Enterprise. I believe he hardly slept, that first year, wanting to learn everything at once, wanting to win some approval he imagined that I withheld from him. He never did lose that innocence, even years later when the captain asked him to take on the thankless job of Security Chief. He did it uncomplaining, as he did everything else.

Four hours ago his image brought me news I had not expected. And though his face is older, when he spoke, I could see the memory of him at nineteen as if it were yesterday. My first thought upon seeing him was how fragile these humans are...how fleeting their lives.

McCoy would appreciate the irony of that.

It surprised me...the degree to which I was unprepared to hear his news.

The Chagall on the south wall of my study mocks me subtly, reminding me of my hubris. It is the Expulsion from Paradise. I told Valeris once that its purpose was to remind me that all things end.

Valeris. I am further reminded of my own fallibility. But that is an old wound, one mostly healed by the years. This new one is fresher, and bites far deeper, and I understand that I have been arrogant indeed in thinking that I know anything at all of endings.

I was not ready.

I am not ready.

. . .

T'Sharen is at the door.

[pause]

[resume recording]

She will not pry, but I am transparent to her, I think. She knows that something has happened. My claims of immersion in S'ionan's quantum treatises will not fool her for long.

I find this oddly reassuring.

But not yet. I must not speak of this until I have achieved Mastery of the Unavoidable. Not even to Shara.

The disciplines seem to be eluding me tonight. I have attempted to meditate, but there are too many shadows in the room...I cannot seem to escape them.

This is the reason for the log.

I do not know precisely what I hope to achieve by making this record. Perhaps some measure of acceptance. The weight of things I did not say rests heavily upon me, and I can think of no other alternative. I am tempted to touch the control stud, play the message from Chekov again. Perhaps this time he will say something different.

This is entirely impossible, of course. I am aware of this. Therefore my rationality is not in question. Still, I cannot entirely escape the temptation, or the thought which follows on its heels: years ago, I would not have needed to be told.

That is difficult to say. Years ago I would have known he was gone the instant it happened. But I felt nothing--had to be told the news of his passing in a subspace communique, as if I were no more than a casual acquaintance.

If I am to be honest I shall have to admit, that truth is not easy to bear.

. . .

I wonder...did he know how far apart we had drifted over the years? I did not. Did he? And when did it happen? When did the distance and the silence between us grow so great that I could not even feel it when he--

. . .

So. I still cannot say it. Interesting.

. . .

He reached me once at Gol, when I believed myself free of him, the very memory of his name already fading. It was not the first time, or the last, that I felt the touch of his thoughts across some great distance. He reached me on the very morning I was to complete the Kolinahr. I stood on the ancient stones, ready to cast out all emotion--and I sensed his apprehension, and his need, and was afraid for him.

Irony, irony. It is all around me tonight.

It occurs to me now, belatedly, just how long it has been since the last time I felt the vivid patterns of his mind's energy. San Francisco, fourteen years ago. It was another lifetime, and the memory is very dim.

I cannot remember what his mind felt like.

That seems to me too bitter a thing to dwell on, and so I shall speak of other subjects. Of the past, as it seems I cannot think of anything else tonight. And if I have waited too long to speak of these things, if I failed to speak them to the one who should have heard--well then, it is only fitting that I should endure my failure by speaking now.

Even if my words are given only to the computer, and he shall never hear them.

* * *

T'Kuht has risen. Her ruddy light is on the sill. Have I really failed to notice the passing of so much time? I find this difficult to believe, but I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes.

Only a moment ago, it seems, the setting sun was at the window.

The significance of this lapse does not escape me. I cannot pretend misunderstanding. Even now I find it difficult to speak. Even now, when the time for such admissions is long past, and it is too late.

Who am I protecting with my silence?

A year ago, the last time I saw him. He came here, to SahaiKahr; I spoke to him in this very room. In two days I was to leave for the neutral zone. He sat in that very chair, near the window, when he was not wearing a pattern into my mother's la'ai rug with his pacing.

I still do not know how he learned of my plans. Only T'Sharen knew, and Saavik...my father, perhaps. Starfleet Command certainly never knew.

I can only assume Saavik's intervention. She has always known me too well. It would have been like her to contact him without telling me, though what difference she thought he could make, I cannot conjecture.

No difference, as it turned out; we quarreled, as had become our custom in recent years. I believe it frustrated him that he could not make me lose my composure, could not make me argue with him. I was...proud of that. Yes, say it, for it is too late for such truths to harm me, and no one shall ever hear this recording. It pleased me that even he could not shake me from my Vulcan calm. I thought, at last, I am strong enough to resist even this.

It is surely delusion to imagine that I can see the pattern his bootheels made on the rug.

He was frightened for me, but it could not matter, could not change what I had to do. He thought me a fool for risking myself again on what he perceived as a hopeless cause. He never understood what Shara and I attempted. He never understood why she had to go, or why, because she did, I had to follow.

He was wrong, and I was right, but there is little comfort in that now.

. . .

I can see the pattern his boots made.

But I am not approaching this logically. My logic is... somewhat uncertain, this evening. I should begin many years before that last time, if I am to speak the truth, if I am to say all the things I should have said to him while he--lived.

I should begin at the beginning.

* * *

The beginning, then.

Twenty-six years ago, my father asked me to accompany him on a mission of mercy, and I went, and did not tell my captain where--only asked him for an extended leave, which he granted. He looked at me with a dozen questions in his eyes and said only, "Take care of yourself, Mister Spock." He trusted me, then, and did not ask.

He was an Admiral, and I was still searching, my hair only recently shorn from my time at Gol. The Starfleet uniform I wore still felt like an alien thing. I had not yet readjusted to the chill of a ship kept perpetually too cold for me.

His hold on the Enterprise was fragile in those days. We both knew Nogura only waited for a reason to take her from him, and he was determined not to provide one. He needed my support. But I answered my father's request, and left, and he asked nothing of me save that I return safely.

Perhaps he should have asked. Perhaps I should have broken Vulcan silence and told him; the shameful secrets of my planet have always been safe with him. It set a precedent, though I did not see that at the time.

It was the first time I kept something of importance from him, but it was not the last.

Listen to me. I blame him for my own lack of trust, as if he should take responsibility. He probably would take responsibility, if he were here.

. . .

If I am to manage this with any measure of success, I must refrain from the self-indulgence of such thoughts.

There were thirteen of us, on that small ship, thirteen Vulcans unarmed in the heart of the Romulan Empire. Our harmlessness was our only defense. The message from ch'Rihan contained only three words, in Vulcan, and the coordinates. No one at Starfleet command knew of our mission; the Rihannsu might have shot us out of the sky with no one the wiser. We went because there could be no question of not going.

Thierrull, the Rihannsu called that world, a fitting name, for it means, literally, the mouth of Hell. Nearly waterless and wholly inhospitable, it was not hard to believe that place had been designed to punish the damned.

It was not the damned we found there, but children, starving and desperate.

Vulcan children--and Romulan. Children of rape, left to die on a barren planetoid a hundred light years from anything. This was the secret I could not tell my captain. We would take these children home with us, feed them, save their lives--but we would not speak of them, of their origins or how they came to be found. Their very existence shamed us. This is what I was told. No one who was not a Vulcan would ever know how those forty-seven half-Vulcan children came to exist on a barren world hundreds of light years inside Romulan space. The children themselves would be raised on a research station. The reason was obvious. Who would choose to shame the families of the parents of these children by foisting these poor creatures upon them?

This question was asked of me as we sat around our small campfire, waiting for Hellguard's dawn. Who, indeed?

I would, and said so. My father was not pleased. They asked me to leave the discussion, and I did. It was not until later that I learned another had spoken after I left.

T'Sharen was of a very conservative family. She held a seat on the dei'rah. And she did not have the disadvantage of my dubious human ancestry. The others listened to her. In the end, they agreed to bring the children to Vulcan after all.

One of these children was Saavik.

She was ten years old then, wilder than any animal, fierce and barbaric and utterly untamed. She had been living on that planet all her life. Even the other children were afraid of her. She could no more have survived alone on Vulcan than a child raised in the heart of ShiKahr could have withstood the conditions on Hellguard.

She needed me.

When we reached a starbase, I contacted Jim by subspace and asked to extend my leave of absence. Six months, this time. I offered him no explanation.

I could see it in his face, and I remember it still--that moment before he controlled his expression, shuttered himself away from me. He did not expect me to return. I had left him once and now I would do it again. The certainty was clear in his voice when he granted my request.

He never asked where I had gone with my father and eleven other Vulcans, or why, when I returned, I requested an additional six month's leave time without explanation. Not then, and not in all the years afterward.

I wanted to explain. I needed to explain. But to explain Saavik to him would be to reveal Hellguard and all its terrible secrets, and that I had been forbidden to do. I failed to see that his trust, once sacrificed, was something I could never entirely regain. I did not then understand what a precious thing I would lose by keeping Vulcan's secrets.

I wish that I could say I never gave him cause to doubt me again--but that would be a falsehood, and whom would I be deceiving?

. . .

I said nothing, except, "I shall see you in six months, Admiral."

It was clear that he did not believe me.

But, as Doctor McCoy would say, I am 'getting ahead of myself' again.

. . .

T'Sharen was the one who convinced my father and the others that the children of Hellguard were Vulcan citizens, and that our responsibility to them did not end the moment we entered Federation space. I have her to thank for Saavik. I have never forgotten that, despite all the history between us.

It is not the smallest of the gifts she has given me over the years.

Shara. What words are there for her? She is a force of nature-- like a quantum singularity, or gravity. I could no more resist her than the pull of a neutron star. The truth is that I never wanted to resist. I succumbed willingly.

I spoke to her for the first time on the journey home from Thierrull. We were still many light years from safe harbor the day she came upon me in the corridor. I was attempting to coax a recalcitrant Saavik to release the tricorder she held long enough for me to bathe her--so far with little success. My little savage was afraid of water.

So far it was the only thing she had demonstrated any fear of whatsoever. And she was furious with herself for the fear. My efforts to calm her had resulted in my current predicament; the child had bolted from my quarters into the hallway, where she had backed herself into an access tube, hugging the tricorder to herself and snarling at me each time I attempted to draw her out. I had felt the sting of her teeth already several times and did not wish to do so again.

"Nottakes!" she cried, a refrain I was beginning to dread. She had begun to weep with rage and fear, and the tears only made her angrier. "Mine! Yousays. Yousays!"

"Saavikam--"

"A troublesome situation," said a voice behind me.

I straightened, and turned, careful to block the corridor against any possible escape attempt. The woman gazed calmly back at me, seemingly undisturbed by the child's shrieks, which were beginning to grate on my own nerves.

"Indeed. I seem to have underestimated her reaction to the prospect of bathing."

"One assumes that this response results from the attempt to remove the device from her possession?"

"Only superficially. I believe it was the unprecedented quantity of water which incited full-scale rebellion."

"Ah."

She was silent for a moment. Saavik, too, fell silent, waiting to see what this interloper would do.

"Have you considered sonics?"

I sighed. "The sub-auditory stimulus proved too much for her. She would not approach within four meters of the generator."

The woman nodded, as if I had confirmed a suspicion. She considered Saavik, who was glaring back at her with unconcealed ire, tears still running down her face. "One assumes the tricorder is waterproof."

"Affirmative."

We stood in silent reflection for a moment, Saavik watching us warily, her angry gaze shifting back and forth between us.

And then T'Sharen asked her something unexpected.

"Have you ever seen a flame-tipped dragonlily?"

The child stopped crying and went very still, her eyes wide. This wild creature was slave to only one master in the universe--her own curiosity. I would come to learn this myself from experience, but that day it was T'Sharen who seized unerringly upon the one method which stood a chance of succeeding. Instantly, Saavik's posture altered. She blinked.

"Nottakes," she said, as if reminding us, but her voice was noticeably calmer.

"No," T'Sharen agreed, "you may not take the flower from its mother until it is fully grown. But if you are very careful, you may touch it."

Saavik considered this for a time, her head tilted a little on one side, her eyes narrowed. I watched the two of them, not without some amusement, recalling the previous day's events. I, too, had resorted to bribery; I had given Saavik the tricorder in order to coax her to board the transport in the first place. It was beginning to look as if this might be the only profitable method of convincing the child to cooperate.

After another moment of consideration, Saavik untangled her lanky ten-year-old frame and jumped down from her shelter, holding tightly to the device slung across her bony shoulders. She gave me a fierce look. Her eyes returned to the woman. "Show me dragonflower," she commanded.

TíSharen gazed calmly back at her. "My name is T'Sharen," she said, to Saavik or to me. I knew her family, of course, but we had never been introduced.

"I am Spock, and this," I inclined my head toward the child, who flashed a warning at me with her eyes, keeping her distance, "is Saavik."

The woman nodded acceptance, and turned down the corridor, heading for the recreation deck.

* * *

The flame-tipped dragonlily of Argelius lives in fresh water near the planet's equator. A semi-photosynthetic, motile life form procreating by pollination, it is one of only a handful of such creatures in the galaxy. Neither plant nor animal, it spends the first six weeks of its life floating on the surface of warm water pools, until it develops rudimentary appendages and lifts them to the wind, sailing on the air currents until it reaches another, distant pool, where it roots and begins to germinate.

These protrusions resemble nothing so much as the delicate, membranous wings of the wyverns of Terran mythology; its brilliant crimson "flower" is, in fact, a receptacle which the adolescent lily uses to catch and hold water during its exodus.

Saavik was suitably entranced.

"Where its fire?" she demanded finally, turning narrowed eyes on the silently observing T'Sharen.

"It does not have any," the woman replied.

"Why not?"

"That would hardly be logical. It is a water-dragon."

Saavik accepted this.

"Can touch it?"

"Yes, if you are very careful."

Solemnly, my charge reached out one bone-thin arm and, as delicately as an insect brushing a curious object with its antenna, she touched one fingertip to the young plant. I found that I was holding my breath. It was the first sign of gentleness she had exhibited; I had not suspected her capable of it.

Then, to my infinite astonishment, the child hefted the tricorder still hanging from her shoulder, and aimed it at the flower. Obediently, the device whirred, its scanners recording dimensions, visuals, and chemical readouts. She watched the data appear on the tiny screen, frowning at it seriously as if formulating some hypothesis.

The woman and I witnessed this remarkable behavior without comment. At last Saavik grew frustrated with her inability to decipher the mysteries of the tricorder's screen, and dropped the device to her side, feigning boredom. She reached out again to the floating lily, leaning out over the water to run one fingertip along the edge of a scarlet petal.

T'Sharen left for a moment, came back with a field tricorder. Not looking at Saavik, she switched it on and pointed it at the adult lily, waiting as the sensors took their readings. Saavik pretended to ignore this development, but I could see her watching the woman avidly out of the corner of her eye.

"Mmm," T'Sharen said, as if to herself. "The adult lily is still gestating. There will be two more young in a week's time."

Saavik half-turned, her curiosity almost tangible. But still she did not quite let herself look at what the woman was doing. Getting into the sense of the game, I leaned forward and looked over the woman's shoulder.

"Yes, interesting. And it appears as though this one was born only this morning. Its development is quite remarkable."

"Indeed. I believe its 'wings' are beginning to form already."

Saavik had inched closer to us; she was staring intently at the readout screen, and trying to appear uninterested. Her quick gaze was taking in the shifting indicators. I saw her thin, too- long fingers flex, as if subconsciously reaching for something.

T'Sharen, with seeming indifference, set the device down on the edge of the clear pool, beside where Saavik knelt. There she left it. Then, not looking at it or at the child, she sat down on the rim and idly began to trail her fingertips in the water. I deliberately wandered a few steps away, pretending interest in a stand of colorful Rigellian grasses nearby.

At last I heard Saavik say, "What does red lights mean?"

"Those are the metabolic indicators..." T'Sharen answered, and for nearly half an hour, Saavik kept her occupied explaining every nuance of the two-inch by two-inch readout screen. I am certain she would have continued asking questions for the rest of the afternoon, if T'Sharen would have permitted it. But finally the woman said, "It is very pleasant, is it not?" and I turned to watch them surreptitiously.

T'Sharen had removed her shoes and placed them neatly beside her, stockings folded precisely on top. She was sitting, as casually as if this were something she did every day, with her impeccably pressed trousers rolled up to her knees and her pale, graceful feet dangling in the water. I blinked, nonplused. The woman was a dei'rah'se, after all.

Beside her, Saavik had mirrored her actions, and now sat with her feet, ankles and thin, desert-brown calves immersed in the lily pool. "Wet," she complained, and made a face. But she did not remove her feet from the water.

"A succinct description." Did I imagine that dry humor? "I am going swimming this afternoon. Do you wish to accompany me?"

The child swiveled her head sharply toward T'Sharen, green eyes wide. But the woman was not looking at her. Her posture said, quite clearly, that it had been a casual offer, and nothing more. I saw the struggle in the child's face--swimming? In water? She was ten years old and had never been swimming in her life. I doubted whether there were a single deposit of water on the barren surface of Hellguard large enough to bathe in. But this woman was an enigma, one Saavik was not ready to relinquish, her expression seemed to say.

Perhaps I only projected my own thought.

She said, rather mournfully, "Cats don't swims."

Saavik means "little cat" in Rihannsu, as I was aware. I did not know if T'Sharen knew it. She did not express any surprise at the rather odd response, but said only, "Little cats may sometimes learn to swim, if they begin early enough."

It was years before I learned what the name "little cat" really meant to Saavik, years before I learned she had been called thus by a Vulcan woman held prisoner on Thierrull, later killed while Saavik watched. The woman was not Saavik's mother, but she was the closest thing to it that the child ever knew.

I do not know what T'Sharen's words evoked in her that day. She only gazed at the woman for a long moment, her green eyes wide and solemn and too large for her thin face. Then she said, in perfect Standard, "Little cats are not afraid of water."

* * *

We became a threesome on that long journey back to Federation space, spending afternoons at the small swimming pool, evenings sharing meals in my quarters, or T'Sharen's. Often after we ate Shara would unwrap her Llonian pipes, and I would take up my lyrette, and we would play for an audience of one. Or she would sing and that way teach the child the Vulcan language. Sometimes I would look up in the middle of a piece to watch her play, her midnight-dark hair hanging down in a curtain, her slender fingers dancing over the stems of the pipes, her blue-grey eyes watching me watching her.

It was a six-week journey back to Vulcan. Every day of it was a learning experience. Saavik learned to swim like a fish, and to speak Vulcan, and I--

I learned something else entirely.

Late one night near the end of our journey, I woke violently from a disturbing dream--the third in as many nights--to find my skin damp with perspiration, and a reading lamp broken into smithereens beside the bed. It had been resting on the headboard; I had knocked it down while I slept. I sat upright, the bedclothes twisted around me, struggling to regulate my breathing and listening, fearing the noise might have woken the child. I heard nothing from the next room.

Gradually I breathed easier, and I rose from the bed and set about straightening the mess, moving silently, finding the simple act of restoring order to be the calming influence I needed. When the room was neat again, I made the bed and sat upon it, considering.

It had come early--but not that early. Two months at most. Easily explained by hybrid physiology or any one of a dozen factors. I weighed that and came to the conclusion that the timing did not matter; I knew. My Time was upon me, and there was no point in trying to determine why it had come some seven weeks too soon.

Long ago I had decided I would not give quarter to this biological imperative. After the disastrous, very nearly tragic ending of my first pon farr, I had determined that I would not suffer again the awkward ordeal of an arranged marriage. I would go to Gol and endure the cold purgation offered there before I would choose a lifemate out of simple exigency.

I suppose that was arrogance again--a refusal to submit to the realities of nature. But then, I had thought there was time.

Circumstances had conspired against me.

I got up and went into the room where Saavik slept.

I stood looking down at her for a long time. In sleep, she was no longer a fierce little cat but only a ten-year-old girl, alone in the world. I thought about T'Sharen and wondered if she would be willing to care for this barbaric, dangerous, brilliant child--thought about T'Sharen's conservative family, and what they would say. I had spent nearly every day in the woman's company for a month, and I had no idea what she would think of such a suggestion. She was as much of an enigma as she had been the first day I met her.

I had found her cool, unreadable, supremely Vulcan; we had spoken of physics and history and politics and never once of anything remotely personal. In spite of the fact that her strong and eloquently stated opinions spoke of deeply held beliefs, in a month she had revealed to me nothing of herself, of her past, of her inner thoughts.

And yet there had been her undeniable connection to the child. And the music.

I reached out to brush a fingertip along the dark wing of Saavik's brow, furrowed with seriousness in sleep, and the thought came to me that I did not want to die. And on the heels of that came an image of my captain, and the realization that I would not live long enough to see him again. A week...eight days at most. Not long enough. I experienced a flash of most unVulcan bitterness.

It occurred to me that he would think I had deliberately separated myself from him--that I had known my Time was approaching and had chosen to put this distance between us, had chosen to 'go off into the night' rather than endure his too-human response to this too-Vulcan affliction. And then it occurred to me that perhaps he would not be entirely wrong. Without warning, the afterimage of his lifeless form held fast in the fatal grip of my own hands shimmered like a burnt-out echo at the back of my vision, and was gone as swiftly.

At least he would be safe from me.

That betrayal of my own thoughts jolted me, and I pulled my hand away from the child's sleeping face--stood alone in the near darkness, grappling with it. I came to no conclusion which would satisfy me; at last I was forced to let it go.

Illogical to regret that which cannot be changed, my father's voice said to me, and I accepted his wisdom.

I was younger then, and such answers came easier.

. . .

It is late, the house quiet. Some time ago I saw T'Sharen walking in the garden, a slender, silent shadow in the starlight.

She has not disturbed me again, though it has been hours now since I closed the door to my study behind her, though I did not join her for dinner, as is my custom. She will not make demands. Yet she passed deliberately beneath my window, no accident or coincidence, a silent reminder that she is near, if I require anything.

I cannot go to her. Not yet. I have begun and so I must continue, if I am to find any measure of resolution.

Perhaps it is this vigil I keep which calls to mind that other, long ago.

. . .

That night I sat in darkness for a very long time, watching Saavik as she slept, planning the steps I would need to take before the fever progressed too far, and my ability to act deserted me. This I did with a clinical detachment born of necessity. I did not know how much time I had.

First, the child. I had some reason to believe that there existed at least a chance that T'Sharen would accept the responsibility, though I did not delude myself that it was a small favor I asked. No matter. There was a possibility; therefore, I would ask her. An easy enough thing to determine what I needed to know without revealing the truth. I am a Starfleet officer, I would say. How can I care for a child? I would speak of my oath, my duty, real enough concerns. And what of Saavik? I would say.

If T'Sharen could not, or would not take her--then there was Sarek. Not a perfect solution by any stretch, but still, better than to leave her with no one. The obstacle there lay in the fact that I could not speak to my father openly without arousing his suspicion. It would be much more difficult to test those waters without revealing too much of what I intended.

And what precisely did I intend? The practicalities of the situation demanded that I consider every angle, every contingency. I shied from the inevitable conclusion, but time was short; I did not want to die, but I did not see any alternative. And so it remained only to consider the manner of my death, and the consequences of the methodology.

Better to end it swiftly, I thought. I had no desire to face the long descent into darkness, the slow agony of metabolic breakdown that pon farr would mean. And thinking this, the realization came to me that I could accomplish two things at once. I could avert that appalling fate and simultaneously spare those I left behind some measure of distress. As long as no autopsy was performed, no one need ever know the true cause of my demise. Sarek and Amanda need suffer no guilt on my behalf for the failure of my betrothal to T'Pring. And James Kirk need never blame himself for granting my request for leave, need never condemn me for my arrogance, my complacency, which had allowed this situation to occur.

That thought was at once disturbing and dangerously comforting.

All through that long night I played out hypothetical scenarios, testing and re-testing for any possible flaws. If I was going to act, then I needed a watertight plan of action. In the end it was the least complex of these I chose to implement, calling to mind something my captain had once told me: the best strategy of deception is generally a simple one.

Sarek had not wished to risk a single life unnecessarily. As a result, the ship was a civilian vessel with a crew of but three; there were no security personnel aboard. With my programming skills, it would be a simple matter to arrange a localized critical failure of life support functions through the main computer, and to simultaneously disable the automatic alarm.

I was confident of my ability to do so without arousing suspicion.

Near ship's dawn, I left Saavik's room and returned to my own, beset by a calm certainty which bordered on fatalism. I glanced at my terminal with some thought of composing a message, not knowing what I would say, what I could say. Only wanting, illogically, to speak to him one last time. I allowed myself to toy briefly with the possibilities of what might be said in such a message without raising his suspicions. Then I turned without activating the recorder and went out into the corridor.

All of my decisions had been made. Now it only remained to act, and swiftly, while there was still time.

* * *

Of course, in all my careful premeditation, I had made one catastrophic oversight; I had not counted on T'Sharen.

That afternoon I left Saavik with her at the pool. Even since the previous night, I could detect differences in my physiology. The headache had worsened, and I knew from experience that no painkiller would touch it. My body temperature was higher than normal. My eyes were sensitive to light.

It had begun.

I told T'Sharen I was working on a collaborative paper for a temporal physics journal, and she accepted my explanation without comment. I left the child with her and returned to my quarters. I was not confident of my ability to maintain the pretense of normality for an extended period. I used the hours of respite to strengthen what physiological controls remained to me.

When they returned from their afternoon of swimming lessons, I laid aside my lyrette and met them at the door. They came in, two silent, slender figures, like mirror images in their black coveralls. I had not realized how much they looked alike. Saavik was tall, for a ten-year-old, nearly reaching T'Sharen's shoulder. In that first moment, I experienced a sudden unexpected awareness of the pleasure I felt at seeing them.

Despite my careful deliberations, I was not eager to die. And that night, I had no desire to be alone.

"How go the swimming lessons?" I inquired.

"I believe there is little more I can teach her." T'Sharen turned to look at the child. "She is a remarkably quick study."

"As I am learning," I said drily. It was a demonstration of the Vulcan predilection for understatement; Saavik devoured knowledge like a le matya with a kill after a long hibernation.

The child lowered her eyes now, uncomfortable with the praise. A month of safety, plentiful food and uninterrupted sleep were beginning to have its effect on her; she was beginning to look more like a little girl and less like a starveling wild creature. I suddenly found myself overwhelmed by the instinct to protect her. And then I remembered that I would not be able to protect her for much longer.

"Will you stay for dinner?" I asked T'Sharen.

Her look was opaque. "Have you completed your work?"

"I have." I made certain that not a flicker of expression betrayed me.

"Then I shall. But Saavik and I have something we must do first."

"Indeed?"

She was looking at the child again, and I thought I perceived the faintest upward curve of her lips. "We have decided a haircut is in order."

I carefully did not react. The thought of approaching Saavik with a sharp instrument alarmed me considerably. For that very reason, her masses of unruly dark hair had remained mostly untouched since Hellguard. Her angular face was framed by a tangle of snarls that fell unevenly to just below her shoulders. I suspected that the thick curls had annoyed the child, and she had made a habit of cutting them short with her knife, or her teeth. I had not yet dared to do anything about it.

Saavik was giving me a baleful look, which did nothing to alleviate my concern. But then I saw her trembling, and recognized the uncertainty beneath the glare. She wanted to do this. In a flash of insight I took in T'Sharen's straight, luxuriant tresses, and understood.

I said only, "I see."

* * *

Something remarkable happened between the two of them, that evening, as I watched. T'Sharen seated Saavik in the adjustable chair at my desk, and wrapped a cloth around the child's neck. Then she went to the replicator and requested the things she would need.

Saavik was holding herself still, perhaps willing herself still. She did not look at me. T'Sharen returned with a small bundle in one hand, and unwrapped it matter-of-factly on the desk, where Saavik could see it. Within the cloth rested a brush with a wooden handle, a wooden comb, a small bottle of some kind of hair conditioner, and a silver clip.

And the scissors.

The woman took up the brush and began gently to work through the snarls from the ends, singing softly in Vulcan as she did so. From time to time she would apply the emollient. Gradually, Saavik began to relax under her gentle, confident hands. But I could see her glance at the scissors frequently, eyeing them where they lay on the soft blue cloth.

I was thinking of the knife I had taken from her; the knife which had been the only security in her life. She had very nearly killed me with it. I had required her to give it to me before I would let her board the ship, had traded her my tricorder, and promised to keep the knife safe. She had almost let us leave her on Hellguard rather than part with the weapon. I watched, not interfering, having to remind myself from time to time to breathe.

I am not certain when it was that I stopped watching the child, and began to watch the woman.

Perhaps it was something about her hands, about the way her slender white fingers slid through the dark strands. She ran her hands a few times through the quiet shine of Saavik's hair, smoothing it, almost stroking the child, as one would an animal. And then she took up the scissors.

Saavik tensed. I saw her fight a battle with herself, and win it, by what margin I did not dare speculate. T'Sharen did not cease her quiet crooning, and I realized that she was engaging in a kind of hypnotic reassurance, telling the child there was no need to be afraid--that she was one who could be trusted.

At last, deftly, she began to move the sharp blades in a kind of slow, rhythmic dance about the child's shoulders.

I watched her as she worked, feeling the sing of fever and the throb of my own heartbeat in my temples, a dull agony. I did not burn for her; there was no mental connection between us. But there was something about her which called out to me, that night. Perhaps it was only the reassurance she gave to Saavik. That promise of sanctuary was powerful and aphrodisiac. I watched her and felt my body burning itself out.

Some time later she stopped, and laid the scissors down on the square of blue cloth. Taking up the comb, she drew a few locks back from Saavik's brow and fastened them at her crown with the silver clip. Then she took scissors, brush and bottle and wrapped them again in the cloth, and turned Saavik toward her with a touch on one angular shoulder, surveying her handiwork. I saw her give a small nod, as if of satisfaction.

Saavik got up and went to the mirror in the bathroom, stood staring at her own reflection solemnly for a long time.

T'Sharen came toward me. "An improvement, would you agree?" Said softly, a touch of something like amusement in her tone. I shook myself inwardly and composed my expression.

"To say the least."

We watched the child for a minute or so, wondering what she thought about the image which stared back at her from the glass. Her face was serious, unreadable. I was staring, too--but what I was seeing was the young woman she would one day become. A young woman I would never know.

After a moment, T'Sharen approached her, stood looking over her shoulder. She spoke, for the child's ears only. But I saw the shape the words made of her lips in the mirror. She said, "Saavik, do you know how beautiful you are?"

I saw the child shake her head, automatic denial. There was nothing of beauty on her world, and she had certainly never thought to find it in herself. But she shifted her weight a little, allowing her body to rest, almost imperceptibly, against the woman behind her. It was a profound concession. I averted my eyes, knowing it was nothing I had been meant to see.

My charge was rather subdued at dinner. She ate steadily and did not speak, consuming a quantity of food which would have alarmed me a few weeks before. It took her years to accept that food was not a thing to be hoarded and coveted. In those days she would eat anything that wasn't fastened down.

I forced myself to swallow a few sips of water and a bite of something bland; I could stomach no more than that, and made conversation with T'Sharen to conceal the fact. I asked her to tell me more of her work. That was relatively safe, since I need do no more than listen.

I had gone to Hellguard because my father asked me to. She had gone because it was who she was.

* * *

The dei'rah ministry has its roots in ancient tradition. It has existed almost since the time of Surak, and has changed little over the centuries. Its members are greatly esteemed, carrying much weight in other areas of Vulcan society; they have historically formed an essential part of the social dynamic of my planet, sometimes sending ripples as far as the Federation Council. T'Sharen had been dei'rah'se since the age of twenty- five.

This in itself was remarkable. The demands of the dei'rah are considerable, and the path which leads to investiture arduous. It claims a singular devotion from its representatives, and often exacts a heavy price. It requires an extremely disciplined mind. T'Sharen was the first dei'rah'se I had met close to my own age.

Among other things, the dei'rah occupies itself with the study of Surak's writings, and of the past. Founded in the years following Surak's death, some of its more pedestrian interests include education, social development, and ecological regulation. However, its works are not limited to these. If Vulcan can be said to have missionaries, then they are surely the dei'rah'sen. Unlike alien ministries of similar nature, it is not a religious group but an assiduously secular one; there are no Vulcans more firmly rooted in reality, more concerned with the practicalities of life.

I know not why I have so often forgotten that.

* * *

While Saavik worked steadily at packing as much food as possible into her thin frame, T'Sharen began to tell me something of the assignments she had taken in her eleven year tenure. At any other time I would have been completely absorbed in the tales she related. It was a life which rivaled my own for excitement and intellectual challenge.

I remember the thought which occurred unexpectedly as I listened: Jim Kirk would like this woman immensely. And then it came to me, very suddenly, that in two days time I would be dead and he would likely never meet her, never know Saavik, and my dismay must have shown in my face, for she broke off in the middle of a sentence.

"Commander? What is it?"

I recovered. "Nothing, dei'rah'se. I merely thought of something to add to my journal submission."

She said nothing for a moment, her eyes dissecting me, letting me know she considered this explanation unlikely at best. At last she blinked, and resumed her tale of a recent rescue mission to a failed colony in the Theta Lyrae system as if nothing had occurred.

I could not look at her. Abruptly the fever in my blood seemed to seize hold of me, and for an instant I feared I would disgrace myself by retching in front of her. Those three swallows of water roiled in my stomach. I tried to take in more oxygen without appearing to gasp for breath. I looked down at where my hands were clenched in my lap, and realized that they were shaking uncontrollably.

I stood up. The chair made a harsh, grating sound against the deck as I did so; the woman and the child both stilled, looking up at me as if I had lost my mind.

Which I had. I said something that I do not remember and bolted from the room.

* * *

She must have taken Saavik to her own quarters and returned alone; I never knew what she said to the child to explain my irrational flight. I do not know how much time passed before she found me in the child's bedroom, lying flat upon the floor, struggling to regulate my breathing.

One moment I lay in fevered darkness, black and hot and spinning, and then I moved and saw her silhouette in the doorway. She came toward me. She crouched beside me and reached out, and I tried to get to my feet, tried to escape. No. I did not dare let her touch me.

Even as I tried to back away from her, I looked up and met her gaze. I saw the sudden comprehension, saw that in my desperation to avoid her touch I had betrayed myself.

She straightened. Her eyes were dark in the faint illumination from the other room, the color of smoke, of storm. I remember longing for rain. I was burning, in flames. I remember that I stumbled in my haste, and she caught me, her cool, pale hands searing me through my tunic.

And then I remember nothing else.

* * *

Shara has been here.

I never could keep anything from her. She sees through me as if I were an infant, not yet past the first disciplines. She came into the room and said nothing, only sat down and gazed out the window, waiting.

I had not intended to speak of it. I kept my eyes on my terminal and pretended absorption in the data on my screen.

Finally I looked up, and saw that she had turned to face me. She was watching me, her face serene. She was not fooled.

"How is the work progressing?"

There was nothing in her face or her voice or her eyes to indicate anything but neutral interest in my progress.

"S'ionan's theory offers a point of view I had not considered."

She nodded thoughtfully. T'Sharen is a capable mathematician in her own right, though that is not her strength. "The connection he postulates between Mordreaux's Constant and the nature of warp fields is a most fascinating one."

"Indeed. Doctor Mordreaux himself suggested it decades ago, but neither he nor I could ever define the relationship."

She waited. I met her gaze.

"I had a communique from Earth yesterday."

I did not know that I would speak the words until they were out, and it was too late to take them back.

She only looked at me.

"From Commander Chekov."

She blinked. I knew she had expected me to say another name. But still she said nothing.

There followed a regrettably long pause, while I attempted to formulate the words to tell her why James Kirk would never send a communique to anyone again.

"The Enterprise-B launched two days ago," I said finally. Not quite what I had intended. But the words came swiftly, then, and I could not stop them. "It was only meant to be a media event." The bitterness came through and I had to draw breath. "But she received a distress signal. Her captain was forced to respond."

She is not slow, my Shara. She was on her feet and coming toward me before I got the words out.

"They did not have a tractor beam. They had no weapons."

"Spock."

"They asked me to attend, and I said I could not leave my research."

"Spock--" I looked up at her. I realized that I was making little sense. I was shaking. "--tell me what has happened."

I told her.

It is the second time I have spoken the words aloud. It does not seem to be getting easier.

She listened, and when I was finished, she said my name, once. She did not touch me. I think she knew that if she had touched me then, I would have been lost.

She left, and closed the door behind her.

. . .

I want to say that is the only reason she did not speak, did not stay. It would not be the first time that she acted thus to preserve my dignity, and hers.

But there is that traitor in me which thinks, perhaps it was the hypocrisy she could not bear.

She has ever followed the path to self-knowledge, self-truth, with far more courage than I. She knows full well my reasons for declining the invitation to attend the launch ceremony. She knows, as she always has, the price I have paid for keeping her secrets. Perhaps she left me alone because she understands that this time the cost was one I would not have paid.

I am shamed by these unworthy thoughts. She deserves better from me, after all these years. It is true the secrets were hers. But the choices were mine.

How does one pinpoint the exact moment at which two orbiting bodies reach critical separation, and begin the long outward spin into dissolution? How does one assign blame for such a thing? The division which occurred between myself and my captain happened over a wide span of years, a gradual distancing, as two continents may separate with the shifting of tectonic plates. So did I make my choices, and logically did not regret.

Years ago I ceased trying to explain to Shara Jim Kirk's illogical resentment of her, and my own quiet acceptance of it. She only ever saw the afterward, did not understand what it was that had been lost. No more than he understood what I had found in her.

My flight to Gol was the first severing--but even then, the rift might have been healed. Well do I know it.

It was what came after that made the distance unbridgeable.

. . .

I did not ask her for my life, but it was life she gave to me twenty-six years ago, when I had seen no way out but death. And in the end I found in her more than I had ever expected and, I thought then, more than I deserved.

When I knew anything again I found myself on my narrow sleeping pallet, the lights at half-level and T'Sharen across the room, reading on the low couch in the sitting area. I stirred, swallowing against the parched, cracked dryness of my throat. That was the first awareness: her presence, my thirst--and then a dull, throbbing ache, in every part of me I could feel.

I must have made some sound. Her eyes lifted from the data padd she held and in the first instant when her gaze touched mine, I understood what she had chosen.

"How long?" My voice was a hoarse croak, barely audible.

"Five days, twenty-one hours." Her tone was utterly neutral; I could read nothing from her. Smoothly she rose and came near, reaching to pour a glass of water from a decanter on the headboard. She moved with fluid grace--but it was too carefully measured, as if to conceal underlying stiffness. I felt a tightness in my throat which had nothing to do with thirst. Somehow I summoned the strength to raise myself a little on one elbow.

Wordlessly she held the glass while I drank until there was no more. Exhausted, I fell back onto the sleeping platform. I was trembling uncontrollably from that slight exertion, and the blood was pounding darkly behind my vision. I closed my eyes.

"Shh. Rest," she said, mildly reproving. "Your strength will return soon enough."

I obeyed, unable to do otherwise. There was a long silence, in which I could sense her close, not touching. I wanted desperately to look inward, to know if I would find the touch of her mind in mine, but I could not find the capacity or will to do it.

"Saavik?" I said, when I was able.

"With your father. I checked on her this morning, while you slept. She is well."

A pause, as I listened to the careful neutrality in her voice and tried to understand what it signified.

"And you?" I managed at last. I could not quite bring myself to say her name.

There was the slightest hesitation.

"I, too, am well."

I opened my eyes, made myself look at her. She was cool imperturbability itself: unruffled, perfectly groomed, expressionless and singularly, overwhelmingly beautiful. For an instant I tried to imagine what I had done to her, what she had done for me, but my brain would not permit the images to surface. More harshly than I meant to, I asked, "Are you certain?"

She met my gaze levelly. "I am unharmed, Spock. Nothing has transpired which was not my choice. Do not be concerned."

I sat up, heedless of my throbbing head--and my vision promptly closed in, threatening to fade entirely. She reached out, held my shoulders as I fought for air and for control over my rebellious stomach. I was shaking badly, and attempting to control that, too. At last I surrendered and allowed her to support my weight, allowed her to bring the cool glass to my lips. I drank again, spilling a few chill drops onto my bare chest; they burned where they fell and I became abruptly aware of my own nakedness.

There was something profoundly disturbing about that vulnerability, about sitting there unclothed with nothing but a sheet to shield me against her unmarred, neatly-pressed impenetrability. She was covered to the throat, her hands on me the only part of her exposed.

I was a monster, a savage; she was civilization, keeping me at bay.

When I could I looked at her again and found her watching me curiously, a scientist studying some new species of insect. But then her mouth curved, very slightly.

"Modesty, Spock? I tend to think it is a little late for that."

I had unconsciously drawn the sheet higher. My hands were fixed tightly in the folds of the bedclothes, as if in fear that she would forcibly remove them. The unfairness struck me, that I should be the one afraid, and suddenly a memory of what had gone before rose up, brutal and nauseating, and my eyes went to the graceful line of her jaw, saw the faint shadow there which might have been a bruise. I shuddered and thought that I would be ill.

But her eyes held mine, clear and open and violet-slate, and all that I could read in them was her mild, tolerant amusement. Nothing worse than that. No censure, no coolness, not revulsion or fear or any of the things I had expected.

I could not help but find in that a kind of miracle.

. . .

Now, in retrospect, I can see that I should have known something was not right.

Leonard McCoy has an aphorism regarding hindsight and its accuracy which no doubt applies. But I was only too glad to follow T'Sharen's lead, in the days after she saved my life. Only too eager to speak of other things, behave as if nothing had changed, shield myself and her from the consequences of the choice she had made. She aided my recovery with cool efficiency, sat with me and talked for hours of her work, of mine, of the children of Hellguard and their eventual fate. We never spoke of what had passed between us. Never acknowledged the cause of my infirmity. After that first time, she did not touch me again.

We never spoke of the link which had formed between us, or what it would mean. Such a spontaneous union does not always result in a permanent bonding--unless the persons involved share a particularly close affinity. The touch of her mind in mine was silent and unobtrusive and I found it easy enough to shut out the awareness of the cost she had paid and would pay for saving me.

She made things comfortable for me, in those first days, and I let her.

But I should have known.

* * *

On the second night I was able to eat most of the meal T'Sharen brought me. Afterward she brought Saavik to see me for the first time in more than a week. I was somewhat shaky, but managed to present the appearance of normality; I sat upon the small sofa in the sitting room, answering the child's numerous questions on the subject of Argelian botany. She seemed reassured by my willingness to answer her queries, and determined to make up for lost time. That night I slept without dreaming.

In the morning we reached Starbase 12.

. . .

T'Sharen found me sitting in front of the desk terminal in my cramped quarters.

"The ship makes planetfall tomorrow."

Her tone was carefully neutral; I let the statement subside into silence, not meeting her gaze. Not turning from the blank terminal screen. She stood in the doorway behind me, observing my illogical delaying tactics with admirable serenity.

It was not our own future we discussed; neither of us had yet dared to approach that subject. We had danced around it with great agility.

We had not yet referred to ourselves, in any context, as "we."

But it was of choices and responsibility that we spoke now.

It was a continuation of the discussion we had begun the night before, had not resolved. Perversely, her restraint goaded me to delay yet further, though my decision had been made weeks before. I had planned to see to Saavik's needs from the beginning, even before I had known the woman. Claiming legal custody of the child was the next logical step.

Perhaps I entertained some thought of escape, though at the time I was aware of no such intention. Perhaps I thought to return to the Enterprise and find there some sanctuary, some refuge from responsibility, from the realities of Vulcan biology and its consequences. But that morning I had run out of time for entertaining such fantasies. A decision had been made. The time for implementation was at hand.

"Dantria, then," I said. Still not turning to look at her. "If you are in agreement that the environment will be conducive..."

"I believe so. The population is small and the predominant culture a tolerant one." This said with dry humor. The comparison to Vulcan society did not need to be stated aloud. "Saavik should not have too much difficulty adjusting."

I half-turned toward her. "Have you spoken to her of it?"

I would take Saavik to this colony world and live with her there for some months...long enough for her to become accustomed to functioning in a civilized society. I was not certain of the fairness of it. I would offer her a home for a few months and then desert her; I had not yet told her what I intended.

But T'Sharen had stepped into the breach.

"She has had enough of uncertain futures. I thought she deserved to be told what was to become of her."

"She will have to go to a foster family, eventually."

Immediately I regretted the words. The "unless..." hung unspoken in the air between us. Reluctantly, unable to prevent the motion, I met her gaze.

...unless you and I...

"I understand, Spock. She will, too."

"Will she?" Do you?

I am certain my doubt was obvious.

"She will understand that you took an oath to serve. She is no stranger to loyalty, or to honor. She is capable, in her way, of respecting a trust given."

True enough. As evidenced by the fact that the child had trusted me to keep my word regarding the guardianship of her handmade weapon. "I hope you are correct," I said finally. "Now I must contact my captain, and gain his consent for my continued absence."

He is not going to like it, I was thinking. Bad enough to be in the position he was in, fighting to keep his command, without also having to lose the one ally he ought to be able to count on without question. And not for the first time. My estimation of his likely response must have shown in my voice, for T'Sharen took a step nearer. She lowered her eyes in a gesture of uncharacteristic hesitancy, then lifted them again to mine.

"Do you wish me to stay?"

I blinked. The realization came to me, slowly, that she was offering to provide what Jim would call 'moral support.' I read a profound, dawning understanding in her gaze and shied away from it.

"He will grant the permission I seek. Your presence is unnecessary, but the offer is...appreciated." This last said awkwardly. I did appreciate it, more than I could say. But she was too perceptive; I did not like the knowing look I had seen in her face when I spoke of my captain.

She inclined her head, accepting, and turning, she left.

"Terminal on. Subspace communique, route to command conn, USS Enterprise. Initialize comm synch."

* * *

I reached him in his quarters, near the middle of second shift. He was flushed, his hair damp, as if he had just returned from a workout. When his image appeared on my small terminal screen, vibrant and vulnerable and immediate, I wished to be anywhere else. Where was his impenetrable cloak of command? He would need it before I was finished. In that first moment it came to me that in my arrogance I had come very close to never seeing him again. And the reverse of that.

I wanted to ask him to forgive me for my shortsightedness.

I reminded myself of the inescapable logic of the decision I had made. It was a small thing, what I was about to ask--in no way did it contradict my dedication to Starfleet or my loyalty to him personally. He was a man who had never shirked a responsibility in his life. He, of all people, would approve my decision.

If only I could explain...

He grinned unashamedly, when he saw who it was. "Spock! Am I glad to see you." He sighed dramatically. "The place has gone to pot without you, you know."

In spite of myself, I nearly smiled. "I very much doubt that, Admiral."

"Captain, please. I'm still trying to break it in. Or Jim, if you happen to remember that you sometimes used to call me that."

It was meant as a joke. But the tone was a shade too wistful.

"Very well," I conceded. "Captain."

He sobered. Business, then, his altered posture seemed to say. "Everything all right?"

"Affirmative. We were...successful in achieving our objective."

"Good," he said shortly. I saw then that the secrecy irked him-- but that he was too stubborn to ask the questions he knew I would not answer. He was studiedly neutral. "How long until you're finished?"

"We reach Vulcan tomorrow."

A hesitation so brief I could not be certain of its existence.

"And then you'll be returning to the Enterprise?"

I suppressed the impulse to swallow. "That is the matter I wished to address."

"Oh?"

His face was coolly inscrutable. I had not realized how well he did that--as well as any Vulcan. I could read nothing from him.

I forged ahead.

"Adm--Captain, with your permission, I should like to extend my leave of absence." The weight of his gaze prompted me to open my mouth again; I bit off the attempt at explanation I would have made. I had been forbidden to say anything which would explain satisfactorily why I needed to spend six months on a backwater colony world light years from anything. What could I say? I reminded myself that I need not explain myself to him. This choice was mine alone.

The unguarded smile which had greeted me was gone, replaced by blank wariness. "For how long?"

A quantitative request for information. Better. "Six months should be sufficient, sir."

His eyes held mine, and I knew not what he learned from that silent exchange. I still do not know what thoughts he entertained in that long, weighing silence. It was the expression he often wore while playing chess: speculative, calculating, self-possessed.

"Permission granted, Mister Spock," he said mildly at last--that deceptive mildness which could conceal many things. "Take as much time as you need. I'll take care of the paperwork."

Meaning, my replacement.

"Thank you, Captain," I said awkwardly. The unexpected hollowness which rose in me had nowhere to go, no outlet. I refused to give it any. I remember thinking that perhaps I was not as completely recovered as I had thought. What other explanation could there be for my shameful reactions to this straightforward conversation?

I failed then to see the rift widening between us with each passing second. Or perhaps I saw and believed the division a temporary one.

I was a fool.

He seemed about to terminate the connection when something altered in his expression, and he leaned slightly closer to the screen. I was held motionless under the suddenly intent pressure of his gaze. "Spock? Is there anything...?"

His eyes said, Let me help.

I did swallow, then. I wanted to tell him about Saavik, about T'Sharen. Wanted to tell him not to worry.

Vulcan discipline held. I said, coolly, "Sir?" Denying his concern, my discomfort. Denying any relationship between us but the professional. It was too much to ask, too far to go, to speak of these things aloud; I knew no other way but the Vulcan one, knew no other language to use with him.

I thought for a moment that he would not accept the rebuff. But then his gaze darkened, became opaque, and he sat back slightly. All right, his look said, if that's the way you want to play it. Two can play at that game. "Was there anything else, Mister Spock?"

I felt the pull of inexorable tectonics.

"No, sir." It required a certain amount of effort to keep my tone perfectly level.

He nodded once, incongruously, as if in answer to a question neither of us had asked.

"Well, then, Commander, I have a starship to run. Take care of yourself, will you?"

"Certainly, if you will do the same." I drew a breath. "I shall see you in six months, Admiral."

For the briefest of instants, something flared in his expression. Something angry and vulnerable and more than I wished to see. But he said only, "Just--take care of yourself."

I saw him reach to cut off the transmission; then his image was gone, and I was staring at a blank screen.

* * *

I told Sarek what I intended over dinner that evening.

I was somewhat surprised that he made no attempt to dissuade me from claiming custody of the child; it seemed I was not the only one who had been...charmed. In the days of my infirmity, Saavik and my father had come to an understanding.

He agreed with my assessment. Though her intellect was formidable, she could not yet be trusted with other children. I would spend my extended leave with her on Dantria, attempting to 'civilize' her. Privately, I suspected it would prove to be a task of epic proportions; Saavik had demonstrated an unparalleled capacity for stubbornness. Nevertheless.

T'Sharen did not make an appearance at dinner. I was sharply aware of her absence, and the significance of it. We were en route to Eridani--in the morning we would reach Vulcan, and the thirteen adults and forty-seven children on board would go their separate ways. When the meal concluded, I bid good evening to my father as swiftly as decorum would allow.

He stopped me, though, before I could turn to go.

"My son," he began, too low for anyone's ears but mine. I was stopped, quite frankly shocked into stillness. Never in my memory had he used those words in that tone. There was some flicker of response in his deep-set eyes, perhaps amusement at my obvious consternation. I stood looking down at him as if he were a stranger.

"Yes, Ambassador?"

I could not make myself call him anything else. We had reached some measure of understanding in the years since the Babel conference, but the silence between us had been a long one, and the rebuilding of communication arduous.

"She is a rare one, Spock. A wise man would not let her go."

It was not Saavik he spoke of.

Many things became apparent to me then, not the least of which the realization that Sarek had not believed for a moment my statement that I had been immersed in critical research for the last week. And I found myself remembering, with sudden clarity, that it had been my father who had arranged this entire expedition--my father who had been responsible for selecting the ship's small complement. I remembered how surprised I had been when he asked me to go.

I remembered, belatedly, what a skilled puppetmaster my father can be.

"Indeed," I said, when I found my voice. "Nor would a wise man underestimate you, Ambassador."

"This is true." That odd, softening expression flickered in his gaze once more, briefly. This time I recognized it for what it was.

I left then, swiftly, before I could betray myself.

* * *

I found her on the tiny recreation deck, as I had known I would.

She did not turn at my approach, though I saw the faint lifting of her head, as of a b'toa scenting a le matya. She was sitting on the edge of the pool where Saavik had first made her acquaintance. Her shoes were on, her feet crossed under her demurely at the ankles. As I drew near she lifted her slender fingers from the place where they had trailed in the water.

"You were not at dinner," I said to her back, and it came out like a veiled accusation. Not at all how I had intended it.

But she did not show any reaction, except to rise gracefully to her feet, still not facing me. It occurred to me belatedly that I had made an incredibly inane statement, to which she could make no logical response.

"T'Sharen--"

Spoken awkwardly. I had not known I would say it until it was out. It was perhaps the first time I had spoken her name since before...

Since before.

She did turn, then, her level gaze inviolable, her eyes almost colorless. For the first time I realized how tall she was--I did not have to look down to meet her gaze. If James Kirk had been standing next to her, he would barely have reached the bridge of her nose.

Perhaps it was this thought which prompted the words which followed her name past my lips.

"--would you care for a game of chess?"

She looked surprised for an instant, as if whatever she had expected me to say, it had not been that. The flash of transparent expression passed fleetingly and was gone as suddenly, but that brief glimpse into her made a sudden easing in my throat, a relaxing of a tension I had not been aware of. We held to one another's gaze, as though, illogically, we were seeing one another truly for the first time.

"In fact, I would," she said. And she raised one eyebrow in a faint gesture I had never seen her make.

I saw, then, that it was her own acceptance which had surprised her.

* * *

I was aware of the pattern we wove, but uncertain yet of the shape it would take. I think she felt it too--as if by some silent covenant we agreed that night to make a new beginning between us. It was the first time in a very long time I had done anything out of instinct alone, without a reasoned plan of action.

That very uncertainty was oddly...stimulating.

In the sitting area of my quarters, I bade her relax while I made preparations, setting up the three-dimensional chess board, pouring cool alae nectar into two fluted glasses. I brought them to the table and sat opposite her, noting almost idly how the indirect light caught in her hair and shone back violet highlights. I placed the slender glass into her hand--a forward gesture in itself--and my fingertips brushed hers very briefly. Our eyes met.

Hers were laughing.

That look made me stop, made the air catch oddly in my throat. I had become so accustomed to her fathomless regard that this open, mercurial humor surprised me into stillness. All at once the contradictions of her came clear.

In retrospect, I understand that she knew, far better than I, what would come of my innocent invitation. That bright look was her acceptance. But in that moment what I perceived was only a kind of promise: whatever comes, we will have had this quiet moment, Spock. And I do not condemn you. For any of it.

I made a gesture of concession. "Do you wish to take the first move?"

She lowered her eyes demurely. "No, by no means. It is, after all, your demesne. Please." And she gestured toward the board.

"As you wish."

We played.

I had learned years before that playing chess with James Kirk had spoiled me for any other opponent. Between myself and my captain, the game of dry strategy became something else entirely, more closely resembling psychological warfare, or some strange, ethereal contest of wills. We played so often and with such focused intensity that I found it difficult to play against anyone else.

It was a phenomenon which had no simple explanation. The results were irrefutable; he had admitted once that the reverse was true for him. But that night I experienced some unexplained resurgence of my old precision.

It was not the only unexpected thing I experienced, playing chess with her.

There was the undeniable pleasure of our conversation, which threaded between the moves on the board effortlessly, spanning Starfleet politics and temporal physics, colonial expansion and Terran music. There was the unanticipated harmony of feeling the slender thread of communication stretching between us--the link I had not allowed myself to feel in the days of my recovery.

There was, also, a vague sense of betrayal, mine, which I did not understand and blocked from my awareness.

The game proceeded. She took a knight with a pawn, leaving two pieces open simultaneously, and I acknowledged her daring with an appreciative glance.

"You take risks much like another chess player I know."

She was inscrutable. "Do I? Or perhaps I simply give you rope with which to hang yourself."

I was intrigued. "Indeed. However, the weapon may be turned back upon the hangman."

"True." She tilted her head slightly, thoughtfully. "It is a close contest whether the privilege of decision is greater than the freedom of having the choice made for you."

We had stopped looking at the board. I sensed that this was more than conversational sparring for her. For me it was no contest at all; that I had learned from James Kirk.

"I prefer to keep the decision out of the hangman's hands, if possible." My certainty came through.

But she only shrugged. That amusement surfaced again for an instant. "And I prefer the freedom. We are a good pair, Spock." And suddenly I remembered Jim saying, long ago, '...just a beach to walk on, no braid on my shoulder...' Was this what he had meant? This freedom that he longed for? I understood a part of what had drawn me to her then, and did not want to see it.

And she--what demons spoke, when she said she wished for freedom from choice? What decisions had she made, at thirty- six, that would haunt her thus? Or was it this moment she referred to, the two of us, coming to the resolution of a decision I had made tonight when I invited her to my quarters?

I chose the lesser of two evils, and took her rook. I met her eyes again, let her see my own amusement. "What is the verdict? Do I hang, or walk?"

She only held my gaze, so perfectly expressionless that I experienced a sharp, betraying stab of unVulcan envy. I had spent nearly three years at Gol, and still my control had never been that flawless. Wordlessly she reached out and, ignoring the peril to her bishop, moved her queen one level.

I caught myself in the process of lifting one surprised eyebrow. After all our sparring on the subject of choices, she had failed to protect the very piece I had chosen to spare. I bent my concentration to the board exclusively for some minutes. Surely there must be some deeply-laid trap, but though I quickly played out some thirty moves ahead, I could not spot it. Was she truly so skilled? Or was she--unlikely for a Vulcan, but beginning to look possible--bluffing?

Her face told me nothing, and I gave up trying to read her. I must have stared at the board for three minutes. Trap? Or bluff? My own words returned to me: You take risks much like another chess player I know.

I chose, then. Bluff.

I took the bishop calmly, calling upon a lifetime of training to keep my face perfectly bland. I turned my gaze upon her and waited. Only the briefest gleam of something like triumph in her eyes before she lifted one slender hand--and took a pawn on the first level.

I saw it then. It was simply, painfully obvious.

It was both: trap--and bluff. She had played my psyche like a master. She had set an elementary, straightforward trap which would not close on me for another eight moves, and she had baited it with the double temptation of rook and bishop. Had even warned me, and still I had taken the bait.

But for her trap to work, I had to take them in order, with precisely the attacking pieces I had chosen; an interlocking matrix, which allowed for no variance in its formation. Like a knot, I thought, feeling the noose draw tight about my neck.

The white king tipped under my hand, and I saluted her with a nod of acknowledgment. "It appears that I am outmatched."

She relaxed minutely. "You flatter me."

"On the contrary. I honor my executioner."

She sipped her drink, watching me over the rim of her glass. "I am afraid I lack the courage to carry out your sentence."

I lifted my own glass to her, a kind of tribute. "Then I am doubly fortunate."

I meant it only as a riposte, but to my surprise her eyes shimmered suddenly, as if I had unknowingly stricken her to the heart. She set her glass down, fingers still curled around the stem. I saw her hand tighten.

"Fortunate?" The words caught on an exposed intake of air; I was mesmerized. As quickly as that, her impervious Vulcan facade slipped, and I glimpsed fugitive vulnerability beneath. Her voice sank to hardly more than a whisper. "I thought you eager for the noose."

A moment of clarity, then, in which I understood that I had been dealing in manifest literalness, while T'Sharen had been speaking to me in subtext upon subtext. 'Perhaps I simply give you rope with which to hang yourself.' A subtle warning, which now I heard quite clearly. Be careful. I may hurt you.

And more than a warning. It had been implied acquiescence, as well--though to what?

I was suddenly wary. What exactly had she won with her victory? The ramifications filled me simultaneously with unease...and a shock of anticipation.

Brahms played on the electronic system, as we weighed one another across the table, a moody symphony I had always before found somewhat excessive. The music swelled over us. I suddenly thought of what it would be like to play it on the lyrette, with T'Sharen's pipes taking the melody.

"It is a remarkable piece." Her voice low.

I started. Had she read my thought? Our mental contact had, until now, been so faint I had almost been able to pretend that the ugliness of the previous week had never happened. "Rather extravagant," I countered, covering my growing discomfiture.

"It is that. And also remarkable. I sometimes think that music is the single greatest gift Terra has given to the galaxy."

I do not know why her words made me feel shame. She did not mean to sound condescending, surely--if anything, the opposite. I knew this, and still I felt shame. I do not know whether I was embarrassed on Earth's behalf, or of my own human heritage.

In any case, I spoke before I thought. "I prefer Sepek's symphonies."

Perhaps I said it out of obstinacy. Defying her to name me anything but wholly Vulcan.

"Ah, Spock. Do you really?" Her face was solemn, as if it was the most important thing she had said yet. And she shamed me yet again--for failing to see how completely she had accepted me, from the beginning, exactly as I was, without question.

The sound of my name on her lips prompted me to give in.

But I did prefer Sepek to Brahms.

At least, I always had before.

She closed her eyes for an instant, listening. "I have always wanted to like Sepek more. But the Brahms is so very beautiful..." There was a strange shading to her tone, almost like wistfulness. Perhaps even--envy.

Extraordinary.

We gazed at each other for a longer moment.

At last she broke the silence, a sudden, peculiar intensity surfacing. "There is something else that I have wished to ask you, Spock." I nodded permission, wondering what would come next. I was rapidly losing control of the conversation.

"Perhaps you will think it too personal."

Fascinating--was she actually blushing?

"If I do not wish to answer, I will simply tell you so."

She blinked. "Of course." Still she said nothing. I waited, determined not to speak again. She seemed to be searching for the correct phrasing.

I thought I was prepared for any sort of query, but still she took me by surprise.

"What was it like...to meld with V'ger? I have wanted to ask you since the moment I met you."

My perplexity must have been evident. I sat back in my chair, trying to encompass this unexpected development. "Why would you wish to know this?"

"What Vulcan wouldn't?" she countered. "To know such perfect logic, perfect thought..." Her eyes grew distant.

I shook my head. "It was that. But it was also--barren."

The intensity returned. "Barren? How? Wasn't it a relief, to be without feeling, without confusion?" Somewhere within me, an alert sounded. The thought came again: what choices had she made, at thirty-six, to make her believe that barrenness could be a relief?

I knew better.

"That is a strange choice of phrasing." My tone was carefully neutral. Tonight was the first time she had revealed anything to me, I was thinking, and it might be the last. And then, very suddenly, I became aware that I did not want it to be the last.

The sense that I had committed some grievous betrayal returned, stronger than before. For a brief instant I glimpsed the shape of that irrational guilt like a bitter shadow in the corner of the room. With an impatient effort of will I banished it, and felt a moment's passing loss at its dissolution before ascribing all such folly to a momentary lapse I would not repeat.

She drew a breath like a sigh. "I suppose it is. You do not have to answer, Spock. Forgive me if I have offended." But I could see that was not really what she wanted to say.

Explain it to me, the silence behind her words said. Explain to me what you saw, what you felt. Explain it to me so that I might know that purity.

And then I understood the connection.

V'ger. Sepek's dry precision. And the Brahms, swelling over us like Earth oceans before a storm.

For a moment I considered her, uncomfortable with the odd light in her gaze, the disturbing stillness in her face. But I would endeavor to answer her honestly. I owed her that much, at least. I steepled my hands before me and tried to find words to describe the indescribable.

"It is very difficult to explain what I saw when I touched V'ger's awareness. A consciousness beyond encompassing. Immeasurably vast...almost endless. I have never felt so insignificant. And yet, for all that its knowledge spanned the universe, still it could not understand."

Her indigo eyes, bright with her pursuit of elusive knowledge, consumed me in the low, warm light. "Could not understand what, Spock?" Her voice hushed, almost a whisper. Full of yearning I recognized too well.

For an instant reality wavered, and I had the distinct, entirely whimsical impression that time itself skipped like a heartbeat. I drew a breath; it seemed to catch somewhere in my throat, entropy and oxygen conspiring. And then time sped forward again, rushing downhill into the next instant like air into a vacuum.

Hardly believing my daring, I touched her, paired fingertips brushing the back of her hand.

"This."

* * *

I lost something that night, though no doubt a full Vulcan would think me quite unbalanced to grieve for the loss, would perhaps discount my admittedly subjective impression and name it the romantic foolishness my father once accused me of. But the impression persists.

Not mere physical innocence, for that I had never prized, nor even innocence at all. I think if I was ever innocent it was only years before, when I still thought myself impregnable, when I still believed that logic could exist in a vacuum. When I still believed nothing could touch me.

No, I lost whatever innocence I might once have had years before that--the day my blood burned and I returned to myself to find my captain dead under my hands.

Perhaps it was faith I lost. Faith in a reality I had believed in like a child holding to a daydream, as if nothing in my life would change unless I wanted it to. Not that night but in the ones which followed I learned that all things change, that nothing is as it appears, and that counting oneself Vulcan gives no guarantees.

I told Valeris once to have faith that the universe would unfold as it should. Perhaps I was trying to convince myself, as well.

* * *

What passed between us that night I cannot describe, except to say that it changed me, awakened me to truths about myself I had never confronted.

We did play together, not the Brahms but an impromptu composition of our own. Afterwards we joined our bodies, a purely hedonistic joining, and though we did not join our thoughts we did not need to, for we shared the eloquent language of touch. When it was over we slept. It was the first time in my life that I ever slept in the close contact of another's embrace.

Twenty-six years have passed, and still I remember that night with perfect clarity.

Hindsight again, but now I perceive what it was about that night that made it different from all the nights which followed, all the years between that day and this. Subtext upon subtext--and there were so many things Shara said to me that night I did not hear.

That vulnerability she showed me I never saw again, not once, in all these years. I stopped looking for it long ago, put it down to imagination. But it was not, of course. Now I see that what she revealed to me was real...and there is only one logical explanation for that. The explanation being that she chose to show me that inner core of herself, chose that night and then never chose to do so again.

Why? I have asked myself, and again, logic reveals the answer. What was different about that first night? Why did she never afterward share herself so completely? The answer is clear, and I marvel that I never saw it before.

She believed that night would be the last.

As I have said, I should have realized something was not right from the start. But I did not realize, did not see it coming, and so what happened the next morning caught me entirely unawares.

* * *

I woke to find her gone and the space beside me cool to the touch. I rose and went into the sitting room; she was not there either. I began, then, to feel the foreboding I should have felt days earlier.

As I strode down the corridor toward her cabin, the voice of the navigator came over the intercom, announcing our imminent commencement of Vulcan orbit.

I reached her quarters just as she stepped into the corridor, her single traveling case in her hand. Her eyes registered faint dismay, but not surprise.

"Spock. Good morning." Her tone was pleasant.

There was a sudden tightness in my throat and I found it difficult to speak. "I woke to find you gone."

"I am expected at the spaceport, Commander." There was no trace of recognition in her tone. We might never have seen each other before that moment. "If you will pardon me."

I tried to mirror her detachment. "Where are you bound, dei'rah'se?" Matching title for title.

Her eyes lowered a fraction; she seemed to catch herself, make herself meet my gaze. "ShiKahr Space Central. I must catch a shuttle to Rigel."

The certainty crystallized before I could weigh its rational probability: she was lying. That simply could not be. But the certainty persisted, and the betrayal wounded more than it should have, cut deeper than I could have guessed it would. I could not prevent the bitterness from showing.

"And now a lie?"

"Spock--don't." She moved as if to go. I almost let her. But when she turned I saw the faint mark I had made at her throat the night before, just below her left ear.

"Shara, at least--tell me the reason."

She turned back then, and what I saw in her eyes was disbelief.

I made a decision then, and I still cannot separate the distinct components of it, cannot know for certain what sequence of thought prompted me to step toward her, to stop talking and take action to prevent her going. I took her elbow gently and stepped through the door to the cabin she had occupied, pulling her after me. She allowed me to do it.

The door closed behind us.

I let her go, and for a long time we only stood there in the darkness, each waiting for the other to speak. At last I could not tolerate the silence any longer. "T'Sharen--"

At the same moment, she spoke. "Why did you stop me, Spock? What do you wish me to say?"

"Explain."

She made a sound which I could not decipher. "I cannot."

Did that mean she did not have an explanation, or that she could not give it to me? I did not know. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom and now I could read something of the expression in hers. They were pale grey, faintly luminous. I asked her for the truth. "Where were you really going?"

She met my gaze steadily. "To Seleya."

I understood.

"To sever the link." I was surprised to hear the anger in my voice.

"Yes." Still unflinching.

"Without telling me?"

Now, at last, she dropped her gaze. "There was nothing to discuss."

I looked at her for a long time, searching her face and finding nothing there of the woman I had come to know. Finding no possibility of reprieve. At last I stepped back a little, drawing a breath.

"Was it only to save my life?"

So faintly that it might have been my imagination, she flinched. "In the beginning, yes."

"And last night?"

She lifted her chin slightly, met my gaze once more. "No."

We were both silent for a longer moment. At last I said, quietly, "Don't go."

Something which might have been a shudder passed through her. There was nothing of that open need in her face, but her body had betrayed her. "I must." And then, before I could ask it, "You know why, Spock."

"Do I?"

Her jaw set. "Your ship. Your captain--"

"--will understand." Would he? For that instant, I believed it. T'Sharen made a sound of disbelief and turned away. She took a step toward the door. My words followed her, relentless.

"Do I not deserve the truth?"

She stopped. Did not turn. "What truth?" Her voice sounded strange.

"Do I not deserve to know why, Shara? Have I meant so little to you, that you would go without letting me know the reason?"

But she shook her head wearily, still not turning to look at me. "It is impossible. Face the logic of the situation, Spock, and let me go." All at once, in the silence which followed her blunt denial, I remembered something she had said the night before: It is a close contest whether the privilege of decision is greater than the freedom of having the choice made for you.

And in her flat hopelessness at last she revealed to me, unwittingly, the truth I had sought and what it would take to stop her leaving.

For an instant the immensity of it overwhelmed me, and something in me cried swift refusal. But she only stood, half turned away from me, slender shoulders straight and unflinching, asking nothing of me. This woman had offered me sanctuary when I most needed it, friendship when I had not asked for any, grace and kindness to a child who had known precious little of either. It was not rejection but freedom she offered me now--and I had seen the solitude she had not wanted me to see, the need she would not use to hold me. But by that very understanding, how could I let her go? How could I fail her, when all she had done for me and for Saavik had been out of a generosity that did not count the cost?

Her face was still; she was only waiting. In another moment she would go.

I could not fail her.

Something in me shifted, and there was a heaviness in my throat. I closed the little distance between us. "T'Sharen, look at me." Reluctantly, she did. "You do not have to be alone any longer. Whatever it is, whatever truth you are carrying, you do not have to bear it alone."

"I will bear what I must. You know nothing of it."

"Do I not?" I moved yet closer. She stepped back fractionally, as if I would in some way injure her. "Do you think I cannot recognize my own brand of stubborn isolation?"

"Stubborn?" Her tone was flat. "You have been too long among humans, Spock. I suffer from no such isolation."

I only looked at her. At last, her gaze faltered, and I saw that I had won a point. I tried gently to reason with her.

"Why do you fight it so? Should we not share these burdens, T'Sharen? Is that not logical?"

"You do not owe me anything." It was a whisper. An opening.

"No more than my life."

The dark head lifted. Her eyes were wide and suddenly afraid. She said it again. "You do not owe me anything."

On preSurak Vulcan, when a warrior saved another's life, an obligation of honor bound the two in a very real and permanent way. In such a manner was peace sometimes made between warring clans, and on such unlikely pairs the weight of treaties often rested. She was dei'rah'se: a student of the ancient texts. I saw the fear and knew that she had understood.

I moved to kneel, before her fear or my own could prevent the paying of the debt. I could see her trembling. I lifted my hands, palms up, to her in the ancient manner. "Lacking thy shield, I shall shelter thee. Lacking thy sword, I shall defend thee. Lacking thy name, I shall know thee."

For a long moment she did not speak. In the darkness she was a pale shade, and I waited with my breath held for what she would do.

It was not the ritual of bonding, not the words a Vulcan male would give to his betrothed. I did not know even if she knew the answering verse. It was a warrior's pledge, less and also more than the marriage promise, not vowing 'parted and never parted,' but a rather more ethereal and perhaps deeper faith. It was also a demand.

I took the risk that she would know it, being dei'rah'se--and that she would understand the promise I made her, and what it signified.

I waited, not moving, hands held still in the space between us. Her lips parted. Her eyes were bright and fierce and I thought that she would strike my hands down for my betrayal, for the demand I made of her, after all she had done for me.

But instead she closed her eyes, opened them...and slowly raised her own hands to match mine, fingertip to wrist, wrist to fingertip.

Then she spoke the answering verse, sealing the promise I had made her for good or for ill, binding me to her and her to me. "And no truth or lie shall rend us one from the other, and all that is borne we shall bear together, and I shall guard thy life as my own, forever."

I never knew, and still do not, if she ever forgave me for taking the choice from her. I have never asked her whether she still believes it better to let others bear the weight of decision--if in fact she ever did believe it.

I made my pledge in payment for a debt that was owed. I took the choice from her; the payment she exacted in return was my silence, the truths I kept for her, even from my captain.

Jim says that I am too honest, that he wishes sometimes that I would lie to him, just a little. This has always baffled me. Perhaps it is selective memory, that peculiarly Human trait I have never really understood. Or perhaps he does not consider silence a dishonesty; perhaps he discounts lies by omission. He usually smiles when he says it, so I--

. . .

Yes. Of course. I forgot for a moment.

Forgot that such deceptions, such silences--intended or not, acknowledged or left unspoken--are a thing of the past. Forgot that never shall I keep anything from him again.

* * *

We said little else that morning; there was no time. Two hours later I was standing in the corridor of the ShiKahr spaceport, bidding her farewell.

Saavik, beside me, wore a look full of storm warnings. It had perhaps been a mistake to expose her to the crowded chaos of the port, but sooner or later she would need to get used to such things. T'Sharen was attempting to reassure her. "I shall come and see you as soon as I can."

It was logical, I reminded myself. There would be time for us. Now my primary concern must be for the child's welfare. And in all fairness, we both needed time to consider all that had been said. I watched the two of them and tried to convince myself that it was not really farewell.

"Why you goes?" Saavik's voice was far from petulant; instead her tone was low and full of rising fury. "Why? You tells me right NOW." A traitorous voice within me echoed the sentiment.

T'Sharen was firm. "I am dei'rah'se. I must go where I am needed. And you must go with Spock, my child." We had resolved to adhere to our respective departure schedules, believing it best to maintain some consistency in the child's life; in an hour's time Saavik and I would be on a commercial transport bound for Dantria. Perhaps Shara perceived something of the girl's very real panic, for the lines of her face eased. She took Saavik's narrow shoulders in her hands. "I will come, Saavikam. I promise."

She did not look at me, but I understood. The promise was made for my sake as well.

Saavik did not appear convinced. There was mayhem in her darkened expression, and I was beginning to be concerned for the safety of the surrounding throng of travelers. I found myself planning how to restrain her if she should lose her precarious self-control.

"Why mustgoes?"

Now Shara did look at me. "Because Spock needs you, little cat, to protect him. He has never been to Dantria before either--he needs a fierce guardian like you. You must keep one another safe for me, until I am able to join you."

Saavik eyed me dubiously, looking for confirmation.

I nodded gravely. "It is so."

At last the child raised her chin defiantly. "I guards him," she said to Shara, like a challenge. "Until you comes."

Shara did not betray the slightest flicker of amusement. "Thank you, Saavikam."

"And I shall take care of our little cat." I raised my hand to her in the Vulcan salute. "Live long and prosper, T'Sharen, until again we meet."

She gazed at me for a long moment. At last she mirrored the gesture, and then turned on her heel and strode off down the promenade, not looking back.

* * *

Three months would pass before we would see her again.

In that time my fierce little cat learned to harness that murderous temper, to sleep sometimes without nightmares, to feed her ferocious curiosity with books and a seemingly endless stream of questions on virtually every subject. I answered them all and always she had more for me. Our days took on a new routine of lessons and quiet meals and long walks, enlivened by the occasional temper tantrum. I taught her to read (over considerable objections on her part) and to practice several forms of martial arts (with somewhat less initial persuasion, but no fewer confrontations) and she in turn taught me more about patience than I had ever cared to know.

Many years passed before I was able to recognize how completely satisfying I found those months with her, how free I had been with only this child and her needs to concern me. In the beginning I thought frequently of those who were absent. But in time, the pattern of our days eased the absence, and I would often find that a whole day had passed without a thought of that life which had been before.

I had rented a small cottage several kilometers from the nearest settlers, and Saavik and I were, for the most part, left to each other's company. The house was situated in a copse between two hills. It had a large garden gone to seed, which we coaxed into production. There were small mammals like rabbits, which ate anything we could make grow. There was a stream, with fish. Once a week we went into town for supplies. As the weeks passed, the air grew cooler, and for the first time in my life I witnessed the spectacle of a forest changing with the seasons.

On a grey afternoon three months after our arrival on Dantria we were returning home along the narrow path which ran along the western edge of the valley, when Saavik stopped abruptly and crouched down.

"What is it, Saavikam?" She had been outpacing me, as usual, and I had to raise my voice for her to hear. Her reply came back muffled over her shoulder.

"Don't know." Her head tilted a little, as if she were trying to get a better look. I was some ten meters away. "Looks like a moritu." The gentle, rodent-like garden raiders.

We seldom returned from one of these walks without some finding of Saavik's, some stone or feather or insect carapace to add to the growing collection on her bedroom window sill. I was about to caution her not to frighten the poor creature further, when I saw her reach out. The resulting shifting of her weight permitted me to see something between her feet. Something hunched and furry and too still. In that moment I perceived two additional things about Saavik's latest discovery: the creature's sides were heaving unevenly--and its pelt was covered with a fine, grey-silver coating, like pollen.

"Saavik!"

My perception of time ceased to function, as I cried her name and tried to cross the remaining distance between us in one outstretched lunge. In another instant it would be all over--the stricken creature would snap its head back and bite the child's hand.

Bhollarria, the footnote in the visitor's guide had called it: the 'killing dust.' An extremely virulent disease which had killed many herd beasts and several colonists in the early days of Dantria's settlement. The guide said the microorganism had been all but wiped out. "It is carried by tiny parasites, but can be transmitted through the saliva of an infected animal. Not generally life-threatening for adults, the organism may cause brain damage, and can prove fatal to a child or elderly individual in a matter of thirty minutes to an hour."

All this flashed through my mind in the split second between realization and action. And in the protracted expanse of time and space between the initiation of my lunge for her and its completion, the words 'brain damage' sounded a chord of certain fear in me.

At the groundcar's top speed, we were fifty minutes from the nearest hospital.

In that same insular cocoon of slow motion, I saw Saavik's hand stop, hesitating at the sound of her name. Another second, and I would be upon her. One more second--

She started to turn, and the motion must have intersected the downed creature's peripheral vision, for even as she moved and I closed the last two meters between us, the hunched shape jerked to one side, began to uncoil. I saw a flash of yellow-white teeth. I reached out, but knew I would be too late.

And then I saw something remarkable.

Saavik looked back over her shoulder, her eyes wide at my sudden lunge, at the horror which must have been in my face. The teeth came for her, snapping--and in the next instant, the child turned. With a motion so fast she was a blur of dark curls and brown hands and wrists, she seized hold of the striking head at the scruff and, twisting, broke the creature's neck.

In the same instant that I flung myself on her she flung the beast away, and I caught her under the arms and rolled and landed hard in the grass with an armful of ten-year-old girl.

For a long moment I only lay there, shaking, crushing her ribs and trying to shield her with my body--and she, not knowing what had hit her, lay still, stunned.

At last she made a grunt of protest and tried to shove me off, without success; finally the reality of what I had seen penetrated, and I let her go. We sat up. Looked across the narrow track to where the small animal lay, dead. I could not find words, and so I said nothing, only sat there beside her and tried to bring my heart rate back to normal.

"Well," I said, rather unedifyingly. Saavik was looking at me warily, as if wondering what demon had possessed me. I searched for words to explain to her how near she had come to disaster, and could not find any; to look at that small unmoving bundle of fur and see any kind of menace seemed ludicrous now. I found myself staring at Saavik's thin-boned hands, thinking incongruously of that day, four months ago, when she had touched the dragon-lily with such care.

I looked again at the carcass. Presently I was able to draw breath. "That was neatly done, Saavikam."

"You are not angry?"

I blinked at her, not comprehending.

"No 'not-harms-living-creatures?'"

I reassured her. "Such rules do not apply when one's appendages are in jeopardy." But explanations could wait; now I wanted only to get her back to the safety of the house.

She looked relieved, and tilted her head up at me hopefully. "Can we eat it?"

"Indeed, I think not." I could not quite suppress a shudder at the thought.

For a moment I feared rebellion, but just then something in the distance caught her attention. She sprang easily to her feet and stood on the dirt track, staring intently toward the cottage, the moritu which had nearly claimed her life already forgotten. I rose with somewhat more dignity, brushing grass and dirt from my clothing. This activity I used to gain control of my still-trembling hands. When I could be certain I would not disgrace myself, I straightened and followed the direction of her gaze.

"What is it, Saavikam? What did you see?"

She said, darkly, "Someone is in our house."

* * *

And so it was that we greeted our guest with grass stains on our clothing and bits of leaves in our hair, and a near-brush with death only minutes behind us.

She was waiting inside for us, and the only reaction our state of disrepair evoked was a momentary compression of her lips. I could not tell if she was disapproving or suppressing amusement or if I imagined the reaction altogether. Seeing her, I found I did not much care.

"Shara. You came."

I said it before I could think how it would sound. I was, admittedly, still somewhat shaken from the encounter in the woods. Her eyebrow lifted faintly in response.

"It appears I am sorely needed. What sort of trouble have the two of you been getting into without me?" She was not looking at me but rather at Saavik, who had stopped, frozen in the doorway.

I was becoming painfully aware of the state of my clothing. I was also moving, closing the distance between us. I was not certain of what I would say, what I would do when I reached her. But something in her face stopped me, made me follow the line of her gaze.

"Saavik?" she said, and just then I took in the child's frozen stance, the sudden pallor of her skin, as if all the blood had drained out of her. What was written in her face was such an open tapestry of need and fear and relief that I felt a wrenching somewhere, as of a physical pain. It was only visible for a moment; then she bared her teeth at us, slammed one fist into the doorjamb and, whirling, was gone. A moment later we heard the echo of the outer gate banging on the garden wall.

I was thinking of the rabid moritu, and its denmates, and started immediately to follow. But T'Sharen put out a hand to stop me. "No. Let me go. Her ire is not directed at you." For an instant the pain I had seen in Saavik's eyes found its echo in hers. "I am the one who left."

She took a step toward the door. I hesitated, then moved to let her pass. "Be careful," I warned her. I started to explain further, but she only nodded and went out.

* * *

Begin at the beginning, I said, and that meant telling the story of Saavik, and of T'Sharen, and how the three of us found ourselves so deeply enmeshed in one another's lives. But the real beginning came that autumn day on Dantria, when I did a thing I should not have. And it was the encounter with the moritu which drove me to do it.

It was inappropriate for me to follow them, but I did it anyway, the descriptions of the 'killing dust' and its modus operandi foremost in my thoughts. The likelihood was great that there were more such creatures in the woods. I trailed T'Sharen at a distance of some hundred meters, looking for demented rodents behind every stone and hillock.

Perhaps that is why I lost her. One moment she was a moving shadow among the trees ahead, the next I looked up and realized I had lost sight of her. I stopped, listening. Nothing. For nearly half an hour I paced the woods along the valley's edge, looking for moritu dens and listening for voices.

At last, from a clearing ahead, I heard them. Voices, low, one which spoke steadily, the other which answered in clipped sentences of two or three words. Intending to warn Shara, I made my way through the trees toward them.

But as I drew near, the intimacy of the tone made me slow, finally stop altogether. I had heard that tone before, and I knew where: the night T'Sharen had cut Saavik's hair. For a long moment I stood, undecided. Illogical to allow them to remain in the forest without warning--but I could not quite bring myself to interrupt that tentative sharing. I could picture the two of them, sitting cross-legged on the grass, heads bent close. I was held captive by the image, and so lost the moment in which I might have revealed my presence, or made my retreat.

Just then the faint breeze from the north stilled, and I could hear the woman's voice plainly, as it carried to me where I stood concealed. Her words caught my attention.

"...tlhei, Saavik'khe. Na h'urrain. Ssuoh-d'rae?"

It was not Vulcan, but the language was curiously familiar. I tried to place it, without immediate success. I took an involuntary step nearer, trying to make it out. Then I realized what I had done and stopped, backtracking two meters into the trees. I had not intended to spy on them.

But Saavik was speaking then, her voice high and clear, answering in the same language. "Ssuaj-dh'e, S'harien." And in the very moment when I turned to go I faltered, remembering with sudden certainty where I had heard the tongue before. Then the other thing came home to me, wrapping itself around my throat, and I realized that I understood part of what had been said.

S'harien. A proper name--and one I knew. All at once I understood that I had been blind, and that with the hearing I had gained some small measure of sight.

S'harien. T'Sharen.

I had frozen in my tracks; I could not move. Any number of possible explanations--but dark foreboding besieged me in the moment after I heard Saavik call my Shara by that name.

S'harien was one of Surak's most outspoken detractors. He was a maker of swords, a lover of the old ways, and his swords were also named s'harien. My father has a s'harien, a blade passed down through my family for ten generations.

Pierceblood, it meant, in Vulcan...but it has been centuries since any Vulcan has borne that name. It simply is not done. In fact, I could think of only one race in the galaxy which might give a child the name S'harien.

The Romulans.

. . .

You have my word, Saavik. I will not forsake you. Do you understand?

I understand, S'harien...

. . .

In time I learned to speak Rihannsu like a Romulan, and then I came to know the meaning of the words they exchanged that day, in that other language. But that was not until later.

That day I could think of nothing but the name and what it signified, and my own dire suspicions. There might be half a dozen logical explanations, I thought. It is a figurative word, highly symbolic; there might be any number of reasons Saavik would call her that. Any number of reasons--but somehow I knew. I found my way back to the cottage like a blind man, the danger of the infected moritu forgotten.

* * *

I waited for them in the garden. It was some time before they appeared, walking slowly side by side, the setting sun silhouetting them as they came down the hill. I stood at the gate and watched them come.

As they drew near I could hear the excited, steady patter of Saavik's voice, speaking in Standard now. Shara paced her, face tilted down, listening intently. The child was, apparently, determined to relate every detail of our lives during the past three months in the space of fifteen minutes, and the woman seemed willing to let her.

"...not-eats-meat and not-harms-living-creatures and not- writes-on-walls!" she finished with a flourish, and looked to me triumphantly, as they came to a halt before me.

The woman looked suitably impressed. "That certainly is a long list of rules." Her eyes were on mine, and I did not think I imagined the sympathy in her tone.

"Yes," Saavik agreed morosely. "It is."

Standing side by side, with identically solemn gazes, they contemplated me--the warden of Saavik's prison.

I attempted to look stern. "I seem to recall that one such rule involved not straying from the garden unaccompanied. Perhaps that one did not make your list, Saavikam?"

She flushed slightly, and said nothing. But Shara tilted her head, something glinting in her serious gaze. "Perhaps the list is rather too long for accurate memorization," she suggested.

"You are," I said pointedly, "not helping."

She seemed genuinely regretful. "I know it."

I looked to Saavik for sympathy and, not unexpectedly, failed to find it. At last I bowed to Shara in a gesture of surrender. "It seems I am outmatched."

"Indeed. Thus is your autocracy overthrown. Shall we make dinner?"

"What's autocracy?" asked Saavik, as we went into the house.

* * *

Later, when Saavik had gone to bed, I washed the dishes and T'Sharen dried them in silence. It was a silence that waited. I caught her watching me once or twice and wondered if there were some visible sign of my inner turmoil, the questions that had gone unanswered too long between us. A hundred times it was on the tip of my tongue to speak of what I had overheard, but I could not find the words, and so said nothing.

When the last dish was dried and put away I started to leave the kitchen, and she reached out and put a hand on my arm.

It was the first time she had touched me in three months. The reaction surged in me, startled recoil and a kind of rushing heat which caught me unawares. I turned back to her, momentarily transfixed by it; I met her eyes and drew my arm back, too slowly.

I think perhaps I knew, then. I had pledged to her, and lain with her, and she had saved my life, but not until that moment did I understand the consequence. I had not seen her in three months, but her hand on my arm touched off some vital connection, and I knew then that I would marry her--that whatever her unspoken truth, it would not stand against that connection. It was perhaps the surest confirmation of my Vulcanness that I had ever known.

All my life I have called myself Vulcan. All my life I have struggled to make it true. Never would I have expected that such incontrovertible evidence of my success could fill me with such apprehension.

She must have felt it, too--or seen it in my face. I drew my arm back and she let me, but there was an intensity in her which had been absent a moment before. I never knew if she came to Dantria intending to tell me, if she told me because she sensed in me some suspicion, if it was only because of that fleeting touch. She let her hand fall and spoke the words which would change everything, forever.

"Come out into the garden with me, Spock. There is something I must say to you."

* * *

The moons were rising. Silver Moria was already high in the night sky; reddish Oba, her smaller consort, still skimmed the garden wall. Out here a hundred kilometers from anything, the stars were a brilliant tapestry of light. There would be no hiding in darkness from what was to come.

I followed her easily along the stone path. She led me to the center of the garden, where two ancient gnarled trees stood guard over a stone bench nearly as old. She did not sit there but turned to face me, standing calmly in the moonlight, her eyes as clear as Moria's watchful gaze. I stopped three paces away, waiting.

At last she said, "'Lacking thy name, I shall know you.' Did you mean that, Spock?"

"Yes." It took considerable effort to say it steadily. "I meant it."

She seemed to weigh my answer, as if unwilling to take my word for it. "Stop me now if you did not."

But I was resigned. My answer held the certainty of a decision made long ago. "I did, Shara."

She bowed her head at the name. Another moment passed, and then she turned and walked a few steps away from me. The moonlight shaped her silhouette, glinting red and silver in her dark hair.

"What I tell you now I have told no one in my lifetime. When I have spoken you may choose another path, Spock. I will understand. But whatever you choose, I will have your promise now that you will never speak of this to another living soul."

The fact that she felt she had to ask pained me. "You know I will not break your confidence."

She nodded once, acceptance. Her back was still to me. Which one of us was she protecting?

"Very well," she said. "So be it."

And she began.

"My father is dei'rah'se, as his father was before him. This is a matter of record. What is not a matter of record is this: thirty- eight years ago Stelik--my father--was sent by the dei'rah to a planet called Khamu, circling a star called Tau Phaedra."

I must have made some sound, for she nodded.

"Then you know of it. As you are probably aware, thirty-seven years ago that system fell victim to a fierce civil war which nearly wiped out its two habitable planets. Ostensibly, my father was sent to help prevent a natural disaster, and thus prevent that war. In actuality, there was another reason for his presence.

"The high council had received a strange report from a Vulcan science vessel conducting ecological studies in that system. It seemed that the crew of that vessel had detected and documented the orbit of an...unusual ship. Before the Vulcan captain could scan the craft, it had gone to ground somewhere on the northern continent. However, his account was verified by his officers; the ship had been clearly marked as a Romulan craft, and had borne a Romulan name: the Sunheart.

"This was a very serious piece of news. Vulcan had played no part in the Earth-Romulan conflict sixty years before. But if the Romulans had violated the treaty, it would be war--and if Earth went to war, this time, Vulcan would have to go with them. For the children of Surak to shed the blood of the children of S'task was unthinkable. What was to be done?

"It was decided that the Federation Council should not be informed of what the T'Meia's crew had seen, until the report could be verified. The Khamians did need ecological planning assistance; it would be a natural role for the dei'rah to fill. And so it fell upon my father to go, with his staff and his new bride, to this planet to see what he could find."

She stopped, her head tilting back as if she were reading the tale in the pattern of stars overhead. Already she had aroused my curiosity. This was a disturbing tale indeed, regardless of the outcome.

"For three months, Stelik met with the Khamian scientists, working to save their planet's atmosphere--and all the while he and my mother searched for evidence of the Sunheart. And then one night, quite unexpectedly, a man came to see them.

"He came to the university lab where they were working. He came dressed in Khamian clothing, driving a nondescript Khamian hovercar which he left parked in the faculty lot out front. My mother was alone when he came upon her, poring over atmospheric sensor data on her workstation. She looked up and saw a stranger in the doorway, and a moment later, she realized.

"In the moment when she first saw him, she must have taken him for a Vulcan. But he smiled at her, you see, and said in the old tongue, 'I believe you've been looking for me.'

"My mother stood up. For a moment she was taken aback, shocked into stillness. Should she call for help? Would he attack her? It suddenly struck her that this was probably the first time a Vulcan and a Romulan had laid eyes on one another in a thousand years. He seemed to understand her confusion and came toward her, still smiling.

"'Do not fear me, my lady. I mean you no harm. My name is Rael.'

"'I am called T'Lisen,' she said, before she could think. And from that moment, she trusted him.

"That night Stelik and T'Lisen stayed up with Rael until the early hours of dawn, while he told them the tale of how he and two hundred Rihannsu had fled ch'Rihan three months before, escaping the grim horror which life on the Romulan home planet had become.

"He spoke for an hour of the grim lives he and his shipmateshad left behind, the things he had seen. 'After the war withEarth,' he said, 'ch'Rihan and ch'Havran fought a civil warwhich nearly destroyed everything. The fallout has creatednuclear winter on ch'Havran, and on ch'Rihan, there is nofood. Hundreds die each day, and those of us who wish onlyfor peace are punished for our foolishness. The military are everywhere. They took my fourteen year old son from me,because he would not fire on a group of civilians protestingat the palace gate. The Tal Shiar came and took my wife,because she spoke to some women on the street about thefood shortages. She said that if the ruling classes would eat grain instead of meat, there would be enough for everyone. They charged her with treason.'

"When his story was finished, he said to my mother and father, 'Will the children of Surak let us stay? We did not want to risk war between our peoples. But inside the neutral zone, no one is safe.'

"'It is not our planet to give or withhold,' Stelik said, 'and we do not speak for the Federation Council. You yourself have stated that your government is easily provoked; they may find that even the act of offering you asylum is sufficient cause for war. And if things are as dire as you indicate, your ship will not be the only one.'

"'You are right, of course,' Rael agreed. 'We do not want blood shed on our behalf, certainly. Will you let us go, Stelik? Will you let us try to find another place, outside of Federation space?'

"'Where will you go?' T'Lisen asked. 'Beyond us, there are only the Klingons--and beyond that, nothing for a thousand light years.'

"'I do not know, my lady. Our ship is old and hardly spaceworthy. But we named her Sunheart. If our journey is to be a long one, so be it. We cannot go home.'

"My father thought for a long time. At last he said, 'I was sent here to help prevent an ecological disaster. This I will do. It will take six more months for us to prepare our solution; in that time, you and I shall work together to find a solution to this other problem...and I shall continue to search for the Sunheart. Those were my exact orders, Rael. Do you understand?'

"Rael understood him perfectly. They parted as the sun was coming up, with plans to meet again the following night."

T'Sharen paused there, and I watched her standing so still. Still except for the fingers of her right hand, which opened and closed, opened and closed. I was sitting on the stone bench now, and her face was sharp in profile. Thick eyebrows, long, aquiline nose. Full lips. Strong chin, prominent cheekbones. Now there was a sadness about her, and I knew that in some way I did not yet understand, she was telling me the story of her life.

She began again to speak.

"For weeks they met like that, and each time Rael would bring with him others from his ship. They had fled because they loved peace and did not want to live in fear--and Stelik and T'Lisen learned that Vulcans were, to the people from the Sunheart, something like mythical creatures. They listened eagerly to descriptions of life on Vulcan. They told of life on ch'Rihan, as it had been before the famines, before the Tal Shiar. My father and his companions found to their astonishment that Rael and his friends gave lie to everything they had ever heard about the 'savage' and 'irrational' Rihannsu. Rael smiled at their surprise. 'Many people on ch'Rihan,' he said, 'dream of another way. An end to violence.' My father was intrigued.

"Gradually, as the weeks passed, Stelik and Rael began to shape their plan to present the Sunheart's complement to the Federation Council for citizenship.

"My father believed that the Council was the best hope the refugees had, if only the matter could be presented in precisely the right way. The key, he said, was to assure the Terrans that offering safe harbor would not lead to all-out war with the Empire. This could be done, he said, by presenting the Federation President with an iron-clad legal document which demonstrated beyond a doubt the Sunheart's right to political asylum.

"Privately, my mother disagreed with him. In front of the others she said nothing, but when they were alone she expressed her apprehension. 'The Rihannsu government will never let them go so easily,' she warned. 'Legal document or no, they cannot afford deserters--and the Federation President will see that, and deny Rael's petition. Or if she does not, then the Praetorate will surely push for military action.'

"'That would be irrational,' Stelik countered. 'They would be committing suicide.'

"'The Rihannsu have never claimed to be rational beings.'

"'You quote stereotypes to me? After all we have seen of sane and evenheaded reason from Rael and his followers?'

"'Rael is a wise and gentle man, I agree. But not all of his comrades share all of his views, my husband.' She was thinking of Malakus, the engineer who had kept Sunheart's dilapidated propulsion system functioning on the long trip from ch'Rihan. He had a large following among the refugees, and though he was a personal friend of Rael's, his volatile temper made my mother uneasy.

"'I can only hope,' Stelik said, 'that the Council will not suffer from your rigidity of thought, my wife.'And he left the room."

T'Sharen paused again, and for the first time, she looked at me.

"My mother and father were joined as children, in the traditional manner. They met as adults for the first time at their own wedding, and were married only a month when Stelik was assigned to Khamu. My mother did not have the luxury of choosing her life mate. These facts do not mitigate her betrayal of course--but perhaps I can understand why she felt as she did. My father is not an easy man to...communicate with. Perhaps it is understandable that she should have felt as she did, for a man like Rael S'avren."

My shock must have been written in my face. Adultery among Vulcans is not unheard of, but it is the closest thing to it that I can imagine. But T'Sharen only held my gaze for a moment, without shame or apology. She must have read my thought before I even knew I had formed it.

"No, Spock," she said drily, and looked away again. "He was not my father. T'Lisen was a woman of honor. She did nothing, said nothing to S'avren of how she felt. But she could not help what betrayals she committed in the privacy of her own thoughts. And she knew, when he looked at her, that Rael felt the same.

"Unfortunately, someone else knew it, too.

"Perhaps Rael told him. They were friends who had been through a great deal together. Or perhaps he was only perceptive enough to see it in the looks they exchanged, in the way they carefully did not touch or speak alone together too long. In any case, Malakus watched them closely in the weeks that followed, and bided his time.

"My mother had never entirely trusted the engineer of the Sunheart. But ironically, it was Malakus who seemed to share her increasing doubts about the course of action Rael and Stelik had chosen. So when he sent a message to her computer terminal asking her to meet to discuss their shared misgivings, she consented.

"They talked for two hours, during which time it became increasingly obvious to T'Lisen that what Malakus hoped for was her collusion in a scheme of his own--one no less dangerous than Stelik's. Finally, he asked her outright if she would help him disable Stelik's ship and communication devices long enough for him to take Sunheart out of the system and make a break for freedom.

"'But that is suicide, Malakus,' she protested. 'Where will you go? And what of Rael? He will never agree to it.'

"'Then we leave him behind. It is not as if he would be unwilling to remain with you.' He gave her a knowing look.

"She stood up, having heard enough. 'I cannot be a part of such folly, Malakus. You would condemn your friends for the sake of the limited power such an action would bring you.'

"'Where are you going, T'Lisen?' He, too, rose to his feet, and took a step toward her.

"'I am leaving. We have nothing more to discuss.' She turned her back on him, to show she was not afraid.

It was a mistake.

"'You are not going anywhere, little dove,' he said, and put his hands on her.

"She whirled around, but he was faster than she, and though she had not trusted him she had never expected a physical attack. In a moment he had pinned her to the wall and forced himself against her. 'What's the matter, my dear? Rael's good enough for you, but a lowly Havrannsu isn't?'

"She fought him, but he was strong, and determined. When he had gotten most of her clothing off, she tried to plead with him. 'Malakus, please. You are making a mistake.'

"'I don't think so, sweet one.' And then he took from her what she had never given to any man save her husband.

"Afterwards, while she pulled her torn clothing on over her bruises, he said, 'If you say anything to Stelik or to Rael about this, or about my plans, I will tell your husband about you and S'avren.'

"'There is nothing to tell,' she said, but he laughed at her.

"'Isn't there? Could you look your husband in the eye and tell him there is no truth to it, little dove? Could your ice-cold husband tolerate the truth, even if you did tell him? Or would it destroy him?'

"And of course she knew the answer to that. And in the end she thought, It was only my body. He did not touch anything of my true self. I was a fool to come here alone...and if silence is the price I must pay, then so be it."

I started. "She never spoke of it?"

But Shara shook her head. "Malakus did take the Sunheart, the very next day, and the ship disappeared into Klingon space a week later. Shortly after that the conflict escalated between Khamu and her sister planet, and war broke out. The lab where my parents had been working was destroyed when the university was bombed, and Stelik and T'Lisen barely made it out alive. Rael S'avren and three of my father's colleagues were not so fortunate.

"Stelik took his battered team home, and that was the ignominious end of his mission to Tau Phaedra. He never did get to argue his point before the Federation Council."

She fell silent. A breeze slipped over the garden wall and lifted her hair from her face, and I saw that her eyes were closed. She still had said nothing to explain why she would tell me this tale, now, in precisely this way.

I let her words fade into the night for some time before I spoke. "Who told you that story, Shara?"

She looked at me. "My mother, of course. When I was five, and she was awaiting the birth of her second child."

When she said nothing else, I asked, "And why are you telling me now?"

She drew a deep breath, and a faint, bitter curve graced her lips. "Ah, Spock. That is only the beginning of the story." She turned and paced a few steps past me, then turned again and locked her hands behind her back. I recognized in her my own habitual defensive posture, and something in me ached for her. "My mother died in childbirth, you see. From a hormonal imbalance--an extremely rare condition not detectable until conception. Her chromosomes and my father's were incompatible; the fetus they created caused a catastrophic breakdown in my mother's endocrine system."

I looked at her for a long moment, and then, all at once, I understood. The chill of realization sluiced down the back of my neck.

"Then you--"

She was nodding. "I am not Stelik's daughter. And when the doctors realized what was wrong with T'Lisen and told him, both Stelik and my mother knew it." She sighed. "I think my mother always knew it. She had a name she called me...s'harien. It means 'pierceblood.'"

"I know what it means," I murmured. I felt a rising bitterness in my throat and my stomach was suddenly quite unsteady.

"Well, yes, then you understand. I think in some way she thought of me as the child of Rael S'avren. A part of her died the day they left S'avren at the lab, buried under a pile of rubble. She often talked about that day, and the months before. But it was only when she was dying that she told me about Malakus."

"You were five." I could not keep the consternation from my voice.

But she only made a dismissive gesture. "She respected me enough to tell me the truth."

That you were the child of rape? I wanted to say. My objection was instinctive. Was that how a mother would show respect to an innocent child? Or did she only want to unburden herself, to one who could not judge her?

But the woman I would have remonstrated with was dead.

As if she read the thought, T'Sharen went on. "She died, and my father sealed the medical records, and never told anyone what killed her. 'Complications from pregnancy,' he said. From that day to this I do not think he has spoken a hundred words to me--and never did he speak of my mother, or my parentage. I know what he thought. He is not a stupid man; he must have seen what was between her and the captain of the Sunheart. She never had the chance to tell him the truth; he would not listen to her--or to me. He walked out on me each time I tried to speak of it. Finally one day I left the house on foot and went into the lower city, to the dei'rah compound there. I became an initiate that very night.

"Some weeks later, I wrote my mother's story in a letter and sent it to him. I do not think he has ever read it." Her eyes were bleak, unbreachable. "I was twelve then. I have had no communication with Stelik since."

I spoke with some difficulty. "I know what it is to find oneself separated from one's parent by misunderstanding."

She made a little gesture with her hands, as if accepting a burden. "It is of no consequence. He did what he had to, as I did. The irony is, my father's work on Khamu has become my own."

"What do you mean?"

Her gaze fixed on me, and to my surprise, she came over and sat beside me on the bench. The branches of the trees cast delicate, lacy shadows across her face, making it even more difficult than usual to read anything of her thoughts. She looked at me for a long time, as if searching for something. Perhaps for courage to continue.

"Stelik believed," she said at last, "that the children of Surak and the children of S'task were destined to be rejoined in our time. He has forgotten that dream, in the years since my mother died. But when he went to Khamu, and found the Sunheart refugees, he tried to help them--because he believed it was time for the Travelers to come home."

I breathed the word before I realized I would speak. And when I had said it, T'Sharen's eyes grew so bright I thought she would ignite.

"Unification," she repeated, her voice sunk to a whisper. "Yes, Spock, exactly."

* * *

Her expression warmed a little at my astonishment. "You are asking yourself why I have told you these things now, in this place, in this manner."

There were only a handful of centimeters separating us now, and as she studied me, weighing her next words, I felt again that unnamed impulse which had taken me in the kitchen. I wanted to touch her. I wanted to take that five-year-old child in my arms and protect her, as I had tried to protect Saavik that afternoon. But like Saavik's, her hands were strong and did not ask for my protection. I pushed the illogical impulse down, and nodded.

"Because," she said, and never did her eyes leave mine, "whatever happens, Spock, I wished you to know the truth. Because I wished to tell it, and I thought that you would understand. Because I hoped..."

"What, Shara?"

She hesitated. At last she looked away. "Are you certain you wish to know the rest?"

"Yes. Tell me." But I could see that she would have anyway. The story of her mother's rape and deathbed confession and her father's subsequent desertion had taken her too far to stop now. When she looked at me again her eyes were shining.

"Have you never wondered why the rift between Vulcan and ch'Rihan continues, Spock? If any Vulcan has had opportunity to see the possibilities of reunification firsthand, it is you, a Starfleet officer."

I conceded cautiously. "I have...considered the waste of hostility."

Long-forgotten thoughts returned, crowding into my awareness. Years before, I had encountered a Romulan woman caught between her government and her own honor. I had seen in her the bleak courage of one attempting to preserve integrity and reason in the workings of a military state, and I had been forced to lie to her to preserve my own obligations, to my own state. In the years since, I had often thought of the illogic of waste.

It seemed to be all the reassurance she required. "Then you do understand. Sooner or later, the Rihannsu people will unseat the militarists and tyrants, and there will be peace. Why should we not offer what assistance we can? The status quo cannot endure forever."

She was speaking in riddles--but I was afraid I understood her too well. "Status quo, T'Sharen? As you say, I am a Starfleet officer. I am sworn to the Prime Directive above all else. What you imply is...not conscionable." Inwardly, I was struggling. How had she known? I had spoken to no one of my research into S'task's millennium-old texts, had revealed to no one my own private musings on the subject of Vulcan-Romulan relations.

"You are mistaken," she said, sitting back a little. "It would not be interference."

"Have I misunderstood you? I thought you were suggesting precisely that."

"There would be no interference, because we would offer only that which the Rihannsu have already asked of us."

"Please, T'Sharen. Speak plainly."

Persuade me, I was saying.

Shara stood, and took a few steps away from me, as if she could not bear to tell it sitting. As she spoke, her hands moved, white birds in the moonlight, punctuating her words.

"The Tal Shiar hold sway through terror, as a thousand such instruments of political intimidation have before them. On ch'Rihan, an ordinary citizen may find himself imprisoned for 'dangerous thinking'--or for no reason at all. But since the time of the war with Terra, there have been those who would not be terrorized. One such group calls themselves 'seheikk'he' ...The Declared. They are pacifists, and vegetarians, and in their meetings they talk about things like electronic ballots and staging nonviolent protests."

I repressed assiduously the excitement this revelation awakened in me. Instead I said carefully, "I have heard of no such organization."

"No, you would not have. As conditions worsened in the year after S'avren and his followers fled, the seheikk'he grew steadily in numbers. Too steadily. The Tal Shiar began 'removing' certain key members of the movement, causing them to simply disappear in the night. Sometimes in daylight. Rael S'avren's wife was one such 'traitor.' The movement has since gone entirely underground."

"How is it that you have gained such particular knowledge, then?"

"Spock...many on Vulcan know of the seheikk'he. The dei'rah. the high council." She gave me a sidelong glance which might have held something of embarrassment. "Your father."

I made my skepticism clear. "These seheikk'he plainly do not understand the meaning of the word 'underground.'"

But she was shaking her head. "They do--now. They learned the hard way that asking Vulcan for help would gain them nothing but retribution from their oppressors."

"They have asked for help?" I tried to reconcile this with what I had seen of Romulan pride, and failed.

"Thirty years ago. They managed to get a subspace message to Vulcan, to a woman named T'Vae."

"The high council historian."

"The same. The seheikk'he hoped to open communications with their Vulcan brothers--and they tempted T'Vae and the council with the one bait that was certain to draw their attention. They asked for a complete copy of the writings of Surak."

I was fascinated, in spite of myself. "And did the council agree?"

"Officially, no. They did not, of course, wish to antagonize the Rihannsu government. Even to send a message in reply might jeopardize the peace the Terrans had made at Alpha Trianguli.

"But unofficially, T'Vae sponsored a civilian vessel which launched a week later. On that ship were twenty Vulcan linguists, historians, and anthropologists, and two pilots. They disappeared into the neutral zone and were never heard from again."

I found it difficult to reconcile this with my Starfleet training, my close allegiance with Terra--with one Terran in particular. Though technically the high council had broken no laws, the secretive action Shara described might be considered a betrayal of sorts.

Another distressing thought occurred to me.

"My father. Did he--?"

"No, Spock. Sarek knew nothing of this. To my knowledge, he has never participated in any action which would compromise the position of the Federation Council."

She understood, then. I was somewhat relieved. "Is it known what fate befell that ship?"

She looked at me for a long time. At last, she sighed. "Hellguard is not the first camp of its kind that I have seen. Not the first time we have found Vulcan children in a place no Vulcan should be."

I became aware of what my face was betraying and stood up, taking two steps away from her. When I could trust my voice, I faced her again. "Explain."

"After that first ship, there were nine others, over a space of twenty years. Vulcan's Forge was the last, and it disappeared twelve years ago."

I held her gaze, and something made the connection: Saavik.

"Thierrull," I said, and she nodded.

"They started as concentration camps." In her quiet words I heard the journey of horror, denial, and final acceptance she had made. "A convenient place to keep 'dangerous thinkers'-- and Vulcan interlopers. Hellguard is the fifth such camp that I have seen with my own eyes. In all, there have been fourteen. That we know of. Only the children survive in the end; they can live on less."

"There were others?" I said it before I could stop myself.

"Five times the dei'rah has received a coded signal, telling us the location of one of these camps. Five times we have answered, too late to save more than a handful of children."

"A signal? What is its origin?"

"We do not know. We have assumed the seheikk'he...the underground. But it might just as easily be the Tal Shiar. It would be like them to send such a warning, such a message of threat. 'See what we have done. See what happens to Vulcans who cross the neutral zone.' It scarcely matters; we cannot fail to answer." Her lips twisted almost imperceptibly. "Imagine it, Spock. How the Praetorate must laugh, to think of the justice of it; those peace-loving seheikk'he forced to compete for survival with their friends, the meddling Vulcans." The memory of things she had seen was in her face.

"Five times you have crossed." I felt that I had just begun to see her, really for the first time.

"Yes."

We stood facing one another under a sky full of stars. And I read in her a kind of still expectancy, a suppressed intensity. There was still something she was not telling me.

"Something has changed." The certainty crystallized even as I gave voice to it.

Again she took my breath with her ability to control. There was not the slightest flicker of expression in her face. But her eyes approved me, a brief flash of triumph, as if she had made some gamble on me and I had not failed her.

"Five times--and each time we have learned more about the Rihannsu defense nets. Each time we have come closer to finding a way to get through them undetected." Her eyes gleamed in the shadows. "Soon, after ten years of futility, we will be able do something to help."

I could only stare. "To what purpose? Who will be helped, Shara, if more Vulcans die?"

She opened her hands to me, then, and at last I saw that she had been clenching her fists. At last I heard the tension in her voice. It sounded like distant thunder before a storm. "For thirty years the seheikk'he have been dying in these camps, and still they meet in secret. Still they spread the words of peace. Still they refuse to fear the Tal Shiar. Do you understand? Can you understand, Spock? Is it interference, if they have asked for our help--and can we fail to answer?"

"And what if we should precipitate a war?" I countered. But the instant the words left my lips, I knew I had chosen.

I had said 'we.'

She did not hear it, or perhaps did not understand what she had heard. "Even the Federation Council agrees that terrorists must be denied quarter, no matter the cost. You saw what they have done, Spock. You have been to Hellguard. Can you say that that was not terrorism, pure and simple? Does not every law you know--Vulcan or Federation or even Starfleet-- demand some answer forsuch crimes?"

"What answer, Shara? What can the dei'rah do, without provoking unrestrained hostilities?"

Her calm was absolute. "Join them, of course. Give the seheikk'he what they asked for thirty years ago: Surak's tenets." Her head lifted, and her certainty rang out. "Spread the word of peace to every Rihannsu who will listen."

It came to me, quite suddenly, that I was in the presence of a woman who believed that nothing, nothing in the universe, was impossible. I knew another like that. I had spent the better part of a decade trying to protect him from himself.

In her fearless certainty, I heard the sealing of my fate.

She was pacing now, her hair streaming over her shoulders in a dark veil. "Stelik was right," she said, almost to herself. "His vision of a unification between Vulcan and ch'Rihan was a true one."

I took her shoulders in my hands, made her look at me. "T'Sharen, what madness are you planning? The dei'rah are not trained infiltrators."

She met my demand unflinching. "Is it madness? Do they not deserve whatever help we can give them? Do they not deserve whatever I can give them? My mother named me S'harien. Who shall be the sword bearer, if not I?"

Lacking thy sword, I shall defend thee.

I let her go. There was an inevitability to it that I could not escape; she was voicing convictions I had buried for years. Why not? I caught myself thinking. If the Rihannsu people truly wanted peace--why should they not have help? And who better than the dei'rah to give it? If there were any who stood far enough outside the workings of the Federation Council to manage such a thing, it was they.

Logic cried that everything she said was madness; instinct recognized the truth.

We regarded each other for a small space of eternity, weighing risk and possibilities. I looked on her beauty and her strength and thought, she is the living embodiment of the path she has chosen. She and Saavik. They are what the children of Surak and the children of S'task could be--together.

She only looked at me, guileless and unguarded and utterly unrepentant. And in her face I saw reflected the images of all those children, all those Vulcan ships which had been lost, and I thought, why not?

And so that night I took the first step on the road that was to shape my life.

. . .

"If it be madness," I said, "then I would join you in it."

She blinked. I believe that I surprised her at last. For a long moment, she could not speak.

"There is something else that you must know," she said finally. Still she did not look away, only held herself straighter. Her voice was a bare whisper.

I waited.

"I have a reason of my own. Not political." She swallowed. "A personal reason."

I knew, then, and the numb horror swept over me in a wave. I did not know how I knew. But she gave voice to the certainty in my thoughts.

"Malakus did not die," she said, and her control made the very muscles of my face ache in sympathy. "He and a handful of his comrades returned to Rihannsu space with the Sunheart, some months after the ship disappeared into Klingon space. No one knows what became of the rest of her crew. The Tal Shiar rewarded Malakus for his ingenuity with land, and a house, and the ship he had stolen." For the very first time, her voice faltered. "It is my intention to find him."

She did not need to state what she intended to do once she found him. It was plain to see in her clenched fists, in the sliver of ice which showed in her grey eyes when she said his name.

I weighed that for a space of minutes, and she only waited, letting me consider all that she had said. I knew now why she had sworn me to secrecy. Now I understood the peculiar intensity of light I had seen in her, when she spoke of breaching the Rihannsu defense nets. In fact, I found I understood too well, and that in the end it did not matter.

Lacking thy shield, I shall shelter thee.

"Will you let me help you?" I asked her, quietly.

At last she moved, her head lifting in that curious gesture I had seen her make by the fountain, a b'toa testing the wind. "Do you know what you are saying? Nothing will be the same for you."

"All things change," I countered. "This is logical."

She had taken a step toward me. "If we succeed, nothing will be the same for the galaxy."

"I am aware of that, T'Sharen."

We were only a handsbreadth apart now. The name felt strange on my tongue; when I said it, something elusive shimmered in her eyes, like a vein of silver in dark stone. She drew a breath, as if it were the first in a long while.

"'And all that is borne we shall bear together.'" She whispered it to herself, as if testing the truth of the words. "Spock, are you certain?"

At last, I permitted myself to touch her. And as the first shadings of grey light rose in the east, I showed her that I was.

. . .

It seems that all my choices were made that night, bought wholesale in the moment when I bound myself to her and the path that she had chosen, the logic of it seeming inescapable. I did not know then that the cost would be so high.

I am paying it now, a quarter of a century after the fact.

* * *

When the sun was touching the edges of the sky, we spoke for the first time of marriage. That, too, seemed inevitable. She had saved my life. I had sworn myself to her. And she, in turn, had revealed to me truths that she had shared with no one else, and risked everything in the telling. These exchanges shaped an intricacy of obligation and trust which bound us inextricably. T'Sharen consented in the traditional manner, and when she said the words she seemed content; as for me, I cannot say I regretted anything.

She stayed with us at the cottage for three days more, and on the morning of the fourth day Saavik and I stood at the gate and watched her flitter until it was out of sight.

My little cat sulked a bit, but she seemed to sense that some resolution had been reached between us, and before long she reverted to her usual, intractable self. All that falland into the winter we played the roles of teacher andstudent, though I was not always certain which I was. Ithardly seemed to matter. We were at peace. Now, inretrospect, I think that it was somewhat like hibernating. On Dantria the trees and other growing things waited for spring. As we waited, for the changes that would come too soon.

* * *

[stardate 9871.3 ...recording]

The sun has risen, another night come and gone.

Fifty-eight hours and eleven minutes since I received Commander Chekov's news, and still the universe continues unchecked. In the time that he has been gone stars have novaed, planets have formed, new species have come into being.

And for me, none of these things shall ever mean what they once did.

I tried to sleep. That state of oblivion I would have welcomed gladly, but my own dark thoughts held me to waking; this journey of memory is only half done. The compulsion to finish it allows me no peace, nor rest.

I can only proceed in the hope that its completion will provide some resolution.

* * *

Two days before we were to leave Dantria, I turned on a news broadcast and caught the very end of a story which made my blood chill. "Tune in this evening for further updates on Klingon military activity," said the woman on the screen. She said this as though it were something to look forward to, and then the news ended, and another program began. I sat in the single chair which graced our tiny living room, suddenly unable to draw air sufficient for breathing.

In recent years there had been nothing but silence from Organia. The Empire had begun making forays into Federation space; still there had been no response from the Organians. Starfleet had been routinely monitoring Klingon activity for some time.

The Enterprise, I knew, had been stationed on the Klingon border for the past two months.

When I had calmed my respiration somewhat, I seized the control pad. I typed in 'Klingon' and then hit search. Obediently, the viewer scanned all available feeds; in a moment, it had located another broadcast.

"...no longer appear to be contented with threats. A Klingon battlecruiser, py'rotha class, and two smaller craft reportedly crossed into Federation space some twelve hours ago. Those vessels were intercepted by a Constitution class starship well inside the border..." The broadcast continued in generalities, discussing the history of Klingon-Federation hostility, military strength, political implications. All of which was vital, of course, but none of it told me what I needed to know. I hit 'search' again.

"...casualties aboard the Enterprise were light, thanks to the quick thinking of her commander, Admiral James T. Kirk. This isn't the first time the Admiral has saved the day; Kirk was also in command of the Enterprise a year ago, when the entity which called itself V'Ger threatened to destroy all life on Terra..."

Casualties! I experienced what can only be called distress. Who? How many? Enterprise had been outnumbered three to one. I waited, my fingers pressed tightly to the arms of my chair, for the names of the deceased.

Three dead, the news informed me at last, and twenty-six injured. As it was only three they gave the names: Lieutenant Laura Masters, navigation; Ensign Jamal Modave, engineering; Lieutenant Xon, acting science officer. I listened to the names, and breathed silent relief--and then I realized. All were first- shift bridge officers. They must have been on the bridge during the skirmish, and something must have gone wrong. An overload. A coolant leak.

On the bridge.

The images came swiftly, vividly unwelcome, and I could not stop them. First shift. Where? The starboard side of the bridge- -an explosion, perhaps? The navigation console? I thought of Sulu, who would have been sitting only a meter away. Had he seen the danger in time and backed away?

Or perhaps it had been a console overload on the upper level. Uhura sat there. Was she perhaps one of the twenty-six injured? Was Scott? No, he would have been in Engineering in any sort of confrontation. Chekov? He had been made Security Chief last year; if he had still been at Navigation, would he be dead now?

And Jim?

I heard a snapping sound, and looked down to see that I had broken the control pad with the force of my grip.

. . .

I should have been there, I caught myself thinking a hundred times over the next two days. My attempts to get a call through to Earth on Dantria's outdated comm network were unprofitable. The news broadcasts were frustratingly vague. And my attempts to repair the cracked control pad were equally--frustrating.

I thought more than once of the young Vulcan science officer, Xon. I could not help the belief, illogical though it was, that he had died in my place.

I began to count the hours until I could leave this remote planet, get to a real commcenter. Call Starfleet Command and find out what was happening in my absence. Well, that is not precisely accurate. It was really his voice I needed to hear.

Those two days seemed an eternity, and I had not yet faced the hardest moment of all.

* * *

It was a measure of how far she had come from Hellguard that Saavik did not weep. She did not yell or cry or throw things, but only stood, silent and still, waiting.

I wished very much that T'Sharen were present. But she was on assignment, and could not rescue me. I would have to do this alone.

"Did you finish tidying your room?" I heard the awkwardness; knew that she would hear it too.

"Yes."

"And this is all that you wish to take with you?" Aside from a small knapsack of clothing, she had taken only her electronic reader and a case of tapes.

"Yes."

Her downcast listlessness was most disconcerting. Such apathy was uncharacteristic. It almost made me wish that she would throw a tantrum. "We do not need to leave for another forty- two point eight minutes. It is not necessary for you to stand by the--"

She looked up at me suddenly. "Can we leave now?"

I did not immediately correct the interruption, but only considered her question. "Our shuttle does not depart for several hours. It serves no purpose--"

"Can't we just go? I want to go."

"Saavik..."

I took a step toward her, but she turned away, jerking out of my reach.

She was eleven now, and as tall as my shoulder, all arms and legs and impatience. It came home to me that she was a child no longer, not that she ever really had been. Her childhood had been stolen from her, irrevocably.

And now I would take from her the only security she had ever known.

"Do not make this more difficult than it needs to be."

She said nothing.

"I must return to my ship. And you must go to school, Saavikam. We discussed this."

I saw her stiffen. Her hand on the strap of her knapsack clenched until the knuckles showed white. Still she refused to answer.

"If I could take you with me, I would." I let my sincere regret show in my voice, hoping she would hear, and believe.

Her reply was almost inaudible. "Why can't you?"

Little cat, I thought, you do not know how much I wish that were possible.

"I have explained it to you."

"Tell me again."

I wanted to reach out to her. I wanted to curse T'Sharen for leaving me to do this alone.

I wanted to be anywhere else.

"Saavik, it is not forever." It was difficult to say the words-- more difficult to bear the wounded look she turned on me when I said them.

"I will not asks too many questions, I promise! I will be quiet and I will not eats with fingers and I will not touch anything that's not-mines. I will be a good Vulcan all the times!"

There was an obstruction in my throat. "That is...sometimes more easily said than done."

"Please," she whispered. It was the first time I had heard her utter the word. "Don't make me go."

I had not known how difficult it would be to part with her. I had so arrogantly assumed responsibility, all those months ago, and had not foreseen the cost to my controls.

Well, that was not to be the last time I would make such an error in judgment.

Perhaps if I had been stronger, more disciplined, I could have stemmed the urge which drove me to reach out to her. Perhaps I could have prevented the shamelessly sentimental gesture which followed. But in the face of her broken plea I found I did not much care for Vulcan proprieties.

Her hands were chilled, bone-thin, and I held them both in one of mine, brushing the heavy locks back from her brow. She leaned against me, not weeping, only holding tight to my fingers.

At last I disengaged my hand, made her look at her me. I was struggling for the words that would make her understand. "You must choose your own path, Saavikam. You are strong, and wise, and very brave. I know that you will succeed."

"I choose to stay with you," she said, but her voice held the beginnings of resignation. She had learned that I seldom reversed a decision once it was made, knew that neither violence nor tears would move me.

"On Helena you will go to school," I told her, reminding her. "They will teach you all manner of things, and you shall have your own computer. You may ask as many questions as you like."

She considered this, and once again I was struck by the changes six months had made in her. She wore Vulcan reserve like a cloak now, a costume she was trying on for size, not certain yet if it would fit.

"Then you go to school with me." She tilted her face up to gauge my reaction.

I shook my head. "I cannot, for I have a promise to keep elsewhere. But this promise I will make to you: if you need me, I will come."

She was silent for a space of minutes, weighing that. At last the stiffness went out of her shoulders, and I saw reluctant acceptance in her face. "When I grow up," she said at last, "I will fly a starship, too."

The surge of pride I felt had no foundation in logic.

I bowed my head to her, the only acknowledgment of her courage I could make. "That is quite possible, Saavik. The universe is a varied and fascinating place--and there are always possibilities."

I never doubted for a moment that she would do it.

. . .

We took the groundcar to the tiny spaceport, looking back at our cottage only once, as we reached the eastern rim of the valley. Then the house disappeared behind the ridge, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

The shuttle to Starbase 15 was not crowded. We were able to procure a private cabin, and Saavik slept a little. I tried to read, but found myself unable to concentrate for thoughts of the immediate future. At the starbase she boarded the transport for Helena, and I stood watching the ponderous craft grow smaller in the viewport until it slipped into warp.

After she had gone I returned to the terminal. The Vulcan passenger liner had already begun fueling at an outer pylon; when it departed in an hour's time, I would be on it.

* * *

I meant for things to happen differently.

I intended him to be there, you see. McCoy as well. I certainly never meant to 'slink off into the night,' as the good doctor intimated. I had thought there would be time.

As it was, we only had two days notice. T'Sharen had received a directive from the dei'rah, in the form of an open-ended appointment to Gamma Niobe. She told me when I called her from the spaceport concourse.

It was I who suggested that we perform the ceremony before she left on assignment. It might be months before we would have another opportunity, I said. It would be illogical to wait. We arranged to meet the following evening at my family's mountain estate.

I stood at the public comm terminal for nearly a full minute after we disconnected, staring at the blank screen where her image had been. It struck me, belatedly, that in a day's time I would see her; in two days, she would be my wife.

I found that fact most--extraordinary.

I placed a second call to Vulcan. My mother was...more than moderately enthusiastic. She pretended to be dismayed at the short notice, but her performance was not convincing. I could easily see how pleased she was to be planning her son's wedding at long last. She restrained herself admirably; we discussed logistics for several moments and then signed off.

I experienced then a moment of some considerable indecision. Three months had come and gone since that night in the garden. Three months in which I might have sent some communication to my captain, even if only a text message at subspace. I had no logical motivation for my reluctance, no plausible justification for my continued silence. I had simply been unable to find the words to explain.

It was always my intention to tell him the truth. Not about Hellguard, and not Shara's revelations. But the truth...at least the partial truth. About Saavik, and what I had discovered in her. About T'Sharen, and the changes that she had wrought in my life. About the pon farr. I meant to tell him--but the weeks went by, and as weeks turned into months, it became only more difficult.

Perhaps I thought he would deduce too much of what I did not say. Perhaps I was afraid that too much in my life had changed, and that nothing between us would be the same. Perhaps it was only that I could not face the anticipated response my news would bring.

He would be relieved, perhaps even happy to hear from me. His eyes would be full of hope--or that twisting thing I recognized as the merciless denial of hope. He would be hurt, and vulnerable, but would smile to know that I was well. He would be angry at my silence.

I was not certain whether I could bear that concentrated assault all at once.

And so three months later, I stood in a public comm booth, vacillating. A part of me wished very much to let it become a fait accompli. He was not a family member, Vulcan propriety said. Logically, I was under no obligation to inform him.

I knew, even then, that it was a rationalization--and not one of my better ones. The truth was, I still did not know what words to use to explain. Further, I was reluctant to risk the possibility that if I asked him to attend the wedding, he might decline. In all conscience I could not have blamed him--or McCoy--for refusing to take part in any Vulcan ceremony, considering what had occurred the last time. But it would pain him to have to say no to me.

I did not wish to cause him distress.

No sooner had I formed the thought than the image came to me, of his face when I eventually told him that I had gone to Vulcan to be married without so much as calling him. On the heels of that came the realization; if I asked him to attend,he might refuse. But considering what had occurred last time,what sort of assumption would he make if I did not ask?

I made the call then, knowing that I had no choice.

* * *

The Enterprise was in spacedock in Earth orbit, undergoing repairs. I had expected to find him at Starfleet Headquarters or, barring that, his apartment in San Francisco. Perhaps the universe was mocking me, and my unVulcan agonies of indecision; I had not expected to be thwarted by the mere realities of space travel.

He was on a transport bound for Deneva, the deployment officer told me, on leave. He was not expected to make planetfall until late that night. Doctor McCoy had gone to Life City, and would be returning some time the next afternoon. Would I like to leave a message?

I nearly declined. Circumstances had decided matters for me; I could not reach him until the transport descended from warp. The distance between Deneva and Vulcan could not be covered in a day, except by the fastest warp couriers. There simply was not enough time.

But in the end I consented, and gave the officer the code for a command priority transmission.

The message I left was brief and concise, and there was no aberration in my tone that I could detect. I told myself that I was fortunate to have avoided an uncomfortable conversation. I could do nothing to change the situation, and so I told myself it was illogical to regret. I told myself that he would have declined in any case. I forwarded the same message to McCoy's terminal, and ended the connection.

The journey to Vulcan lasted all that day and most of the next, and I spent a great portion of that time thinking about Saavik, wondering what would become of her in that foster home on Helena. Had I prepared her adequately? Had I taught her the things she would need to know? My arrogance suddenly seemed blatantly apparent. What had made me believe that I could offer her anything at all like what she needed?

It occurred to me then, for the first time, how drastically my life had changed in a year.

A year before I had been at Gol, responsible for no one but myself. Now I could scarcely balance the weight of my obligations. It seemed that the cost of everything I did would be paid by someone else, that every choice I made would injure someone I did not wish to harm.

Even then I did not foresee what end all those turnings would lead to. Even then I did not understand how impossibly treacherous was the line I trod between duty and honor, between friendship and responsibility. Not then or in any of the years after did I suspect the inevitable outcome.

I never wanted to choose, never thought that I would have to. I certainly did not see then that I already had.

* * *

I reached the mountain house by flitter after two days of traveling. T'Sharen met me at the gate. She was clad in green, her hair streaming down her back, and the sight of her would have been enough to make me forget about conflicting responsibilities for a little while. But she had news for me I had not expected, and scarcely believed.

She stopped me at the door to my father's house and told me that Jim was waiting in the garden.

He had come. From Deneva. The trip which should have taken forty hours he had made, somehow, in twenty-eight. He never did tell me how that was accomplished, and it scarcely mattered. What mattered was all contained in the moment when I saw him, sitting on the edge of my mother's fountain.

He was watching the stars come out.

I stopped two meters away, feeling a suffocating pressure somewhere, not knowing what it meant. I had left him alone with his worry and his anger and my silence for more than half a year, and still he had come. I stood in the deepening shadows watching him until I could gain sufficient mastery to say his name.

"Jim."

He turned, met my gaze. Then he got up, startling me with the sudden movement.

"Spock."

I did not know what to say to him. "I am... gratified that you could come."

He drew a breath, visibly controlling. Offered me a shadow of his smile. I knew only then how much I had missed it. "You did your damnedest to make it difficult."

It was as I had feared, the conflicting emotions in his face revealing both bright welcome and guarded uncertainty.

"I regretted the necessity for haste. T'Sharen will be gone soon on assignment, and will not return for some time."

He sighed. "I know. I understand, Spock, really. It's just...I didn't think I was going to make it in time."

I seized upon practicalities, grateful for something innocuous to say. "Indeed. I am curious as to how you managed it; I understood that you were on Deneva, visiting your nephew."

"Starship captains have their ways." The ironic quirk of his lips warmed to a genuine smile. "I couldn't let you do this without me now, could I? Bones is going to kill you, you know, for not waiting for him."

"That response would hardly suit his chosen profession,"

His low laughter was... a most welcome sound.

"Bless me, Spock, but I've missed you. You were serious, weren't you, when you said you were coming back to the Enterprise?"

I endeavored to match his light tone. "You must be aware that Vulcans are always serious, Jim."

"Yes, of course, Mister Spock. How could I forget?" His smile returned then, and I experienced the flash of memory, sharp and overwhelming. A chess game, many years before, the first time that he offered me such a smile, such an open expression of unconditional kinship. As it had always been, I found myself wishing that I might, just once, return it

"I have also regretted our separation," I confessed. And then I felt the need to mitigate that momentary slip. "T'Sharen is... quite a remarkable individual. I have so wanted you to meet."

"And now we have." He lowered his eyes, and I could not read him. "She is rather remarkable, isn't she? I can see why you would find her... intriguing."

"Have you spoken with her?"

"Oh, yes. About you, of course. We've been comparing notes."

I found that my mouth had gone inexplicably dry. "Indeed?"

He laughed. "Don't worry, Spock. Your mother kept us in line."

That thought I found singularly unreassuring. "Now I shall worry."

I thought that he would laugh again. But instead he did something extraordinary, something which took me entirely by surprise. He reached out with one hand, squeezed my arm gently. His eyes on mine were bright indeed.

"No need, my friend. Don't you know that we all love you?"

My astonishment was profound, to say the least.

But before I could fully absorb it, he was going on. "Listen, you have to promise me something."

I had to clear my throat, which gone exceedingly dry. "What, Jim?"

"Promise me that we'll still be friends?"

I swallowed, utterly unable to prevent myself from doing it. There was, absolutely, only one answer I could give. "Always."

. . .

Later T'Sharen would tell me of their first meeting, and how he had given her a look which might have distilled molten durasteel into its component parts. How he had taken her hand and bowed to her, and that the first words he spoke to her had been, 'I have not known a greater honor, madam.'

He had come, in spite of everything, to stand with me as he had once before, on the sands of my ancestors. And if there was something of an unaccustomed awkwardness between us, there was also the promise of the future.

As for Shara, her eyes too held promises...of homecoming, of sanctuary. As they had from the beginning. And so I wed the daughter of T'Lisen at the place of koon-ut kalifee--but it was nothing like the first time. Instead of blood and madness, this time the ancient stones witnessed only the joining of two houses, two minds.

And for that one day, I wished for nothing more than what I held within my grasp.

Chapter Text

[stardate 9814.8 ...recording]

Saavik has come.

She arrived from Earth this afternoon. T'Sharen showed her to the study and left without comment, though I am certain she had some part in this. If I am transparent in my seclusion, what are they in their efforts to draw me from it?

And yet I cannot deny my pleasure at seeing my little cat. I welcomed her into this silent room gladly, and barely restrained myself from some display I do not wish to contemplate.

She said only, "I grieve with thee," before turning to other matters.

It is a ritual phrase which has, by definition, no answer. With the words she offered me acknowledgment, understanding, freedom from having to speak of it aloud. I could not help but remember that she, better than anyone, knows what it is to lose something precious. I looked at her standing there in the late afternoon sunlight and thought of the child I found on Hellguard, and then of David Marcus and, unwillingly, my thoughts came back to him.

We spoke of her work at MarcusLabs, of her family. She was serene, confident, as she spoke of these things, so far from the wild, starving creature I found all those years ago that I hardly recognized her. Motherhood, pregnancy, apparently agree with her. On Earth, she has made a home, a life for herself. I do not know why this should surprise me; Vulcan was never her home.

She was carrying something with her: a data cassette. We spoke for nearly an hour before she opened her hand, revealing it to me.

"What have you brought me, Saavikam?"

"It was given to me by Leonard McCoy."

I confess I had not expected that.

She was apologetic. "I do not know its contents."

She gave it to me; I took it, and set it on the desk, not looking at it. A few minutes later she rose, saying something about wishing to bathe and dress before dinner. Not trusting my voice I said nothing, and let her go.

I am not certain that I wish to view this tape. I am not certain I wish to hear what McCoy may have to say to me. We did not part on the best of terms...and he is human, and the loss but three days old. It must be admitted that I have no desire to endure whatever emotional state he may have been in when he made this recording. The likelihood is great that this is a plea for me to book passage to Earth at once, to come for the memorial service.

. . .

On the other hand, he knows me very well. He knows I will come, or not, as I choose, and that it is useless to try to sway me with words.

. . .

T'Sharen is right. My curiosity will surely be the death of me.

[identiscan retina verification ...cleared]

[begin playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 7503.2:

That still sounds strange to me, even though it's been almost six months since I started keeping this thing again. I keep expecting to wake up and find out that this--Spock, the Enterprise, my command--is all some kind of cruel dream. I keep waiting for the communique from Nogura, the one that'll tell me to scurry back to the Admiralty post-haste, but so far it hasn't come.

Spock's been gone almost a month now--"

[stop]

Why would he send this to me?

It is not the doctor's voice on this tape, it is his.

Why would McCoy send me such a thing?

I do not wish to listen to this. I shall not listen to it. Not today. Perhaps some other evening. Today I believe... I believe it would be unwise to sit in this room and listen to his private thoughts spoken in his voice--most especially so when I must soon go down to supper and eat and speak and perform the rituals of normality in front of the two women who know me best of all.

Unwise, indeed. My heart rate has increased by at least thirty percent in the last sixty seconds.

And yet...I cannot deny the temptation.

. . .

He sounds so young on this recording. He was so young.

The echo of his voice seems to fill the room, and I can see him as he was that last time, a year ago. His hair was silver, thinning--he looked older than my father. It...surprised me. I can admit that now. I had not seen him in months, and in the first moment when he came through the door, I saw him as he really was. I think for years I had been superimposing some ghost of memory on his face; in my mind he would always be thirty-two, full of vitality and youth, radiating that halo of irrepressible energy, as he was when I met him.

In some entirely illogical way, he will always be so for me.

But that day I looked up and saw him unexpectedly in the doorway, and understood for the first time in my life how short a period of time is a century, and what it would be to outlive every human I had ever met.

At least--I thought I understood.

Perhaps that is why I was so prepared to argue with him. Perhaps that momentary initial shock affected me more than I knew. But then, he always evoked a...stubbornness in me, and I could no more control it that day than I ever had.

What was it about him? I never understood it. I could bury myself entirely in impenetrable equanimity, achieve the most perfect serenity of thought--and he could shake me from it in an instant without effort. I don't think he ever knew the effect he had on me. I don't think he ever knew how much--

. . .

Given the choice between recalling my own obstinacy that day and succumbing to the enticement this data cassette represents, I believe I shall choose to play the recording after all. Just for a few moments. Surely my control shall be sufficient to permit it.

Just a few moments...

[resume playback]

"Spock's been gone almost a month now, and I'm trying not to dwell on that. I keep telling myself I'm just getting worked up over nothing. He's entitled to his privacy. I shouldn't let it get to me--I know he'll be back in a matter of weeks.

Listen to me. Who am I kidding, anyway? Of course I'm nervous. I always get nervous when I can't personally watch over one of my crew. The mother hen instinct, Bones calls it-- and he should know. Looks like three years behind a desk hasn't cured me of it.

But it's more than that with Spock, of course.

. . .

I can't help feeling like there's some countdown going on with him... as if, any day now, he's going wake up and realize he made a mistake coming back, that he was insane to risk polluting himself with human imperfections again. I keep telling myself that's paranoia--that it's my own insecurity talking, and that he's here to stay. That when he walked away three years ago he was a different person.

And then, just when I've got myself convinced, he comes to me and asks for extended leave and doesn't say one word about where he's going or why...

Then there's the other thing, the thing Bones and I keep skirting around, though we haven't worked ourselves up to actually talking about it yet. But he can count as well as I can. And how the hell am I going to work up the courage to talk to Spock about it? It's been six years, nine months, and an odd number of days--and what is he going to do? Damn Vulcan biology anyway...

One more reason for me to worry, and to wish he'd hurry back from wherever he's gone. Not that I know what difference that would make. But it would make me feel better if I could keep an eye on him.

Vulcan headaches aside, I have to admit it feels damn good to be out here. I'm still getting used to people calling me 'Captain Kirk' again. Uhura said it yesterday, just as natural and casual as you please, and I actually caught myself grinning like an idiot. Must be getting senile. I don't think anyone noticed.

I finally broke down and told Bones he was right three years ago--that I never should have let Nogura maneuver me into the Admiralty. Why don't I listen to him more often? He's always right. I know why. I was out of my head, what with Spock leaving so suddenly, and everything else that happened those last couple of months. And Nogura, that old fox, wasted no time taking advantage of my state of mind.

Speaking of Bones, I'd better get down to the gym before he finds out I'm not there and puts me on report..."

[stop]

A quarter of a century since he made this log. Why then should I feel this immediacy... as if I might close my eyes for a moment, and open them to find him standing there near the window, not yet forty, full of concern and hope for the future? Why then should I feel this remorse...this regret for choices I made three decades ago and can never change?

We never spoke of my leaving, all those years ago. I never could explain--and he would never pry. He never let me see how much I hurt him. But I hear it now in his thirty-nine year old voice, and I--regret.

In the end it became only one of the many things we did not speak of. He never did ask why I went to Gol, never asked why I came back. He assumed that V'ger was my only reason and I, in my cowardice, never gave him cause to believe otherwise. I am certain now that he never knew the real reason I left Vulcan to return to Starfleet and the Enterprise. The evidence is here, in his voice, in his words. He never knew that I felt the touch of his thoughts across all those light years of space, felt him calling out to me.

I certainly never spoke of it.

Even in this single log entry, so much is revealed that he did not ever hint of. In his own way, James Kirk could be as reticent as any Vulcan. Always I valued that in him...the understanding which did not require words. I believed he valued it in me, as well. Now, too late, I understand that silence was our strength, but it was as much a weakness.

How many truths went unspoken between us? How many misunderstandings did we propagate with our silences, our carefully guarded machinations?

. . .

It is readily apparent that I will not be making an appearance at dinner this evening. Saavik will understand too well. T'Sharen will. They will know why I cannot face them, though they will not ever speak of it.

I shall finish what I have begun.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 7512.4:

McCoy's finally let me loose on my own recognizance. He ran about five hundred tests on me and kept me cooped up in my quarters for a week, and never did come up with an explanation for this strange bug I've been fighting. It doesn't seem to be contagious--no reports of nausea or dizziness or any other symptoms from the crew. He gave me about fifty vitamin shots and made me promise I'd run to him at the first hint of returning fever, but at least he let me off the hook. How does it look for the captain of the flagship to be locked up like a six-year-old with the chicken pox?

I heard from Spock today, though it wasn't the news I'd hoped for. That's an understatement. It looks like I'd better start looking for a new first officer.

Damn. I don't know what I expected. These last months have been a difficult adjustment for him, even if he didn't show it. I knew that. I should have said something before--should have let him know how much I need him here. It just seemed like there was never any time for us.

But I thought he'd come home and we could have dinner and catch up on things, maybe talk like we used to. We could make plans, figure out how we were going to break all our own efficiency records. Play chess. Dammit, why didn't I see this coming?

Six months should be sufficient, he said. Maybe he even meant it.

I wish I could believe that. But the truth is, I don't. Not for a second. I know goodbye when I hear it, even if I don't understand it. Something's happened, and he'll be drawn and quartered before he'll tell me what it is. I saw it in his face. Whatever it is, he didn't think I needed to know about it.

Of course, I think I do know. As I said, I can count to seven as well as the next man. And as for what that request for extended leave means...well, I suppose I can make some guesses about that, too. There's got to be any number of eligible Vulcan females that would be more than willing...

McCoy, damn him, suggested that maybe I ought to call Sarek up and ask him if he knows anything. As if that's something a sane man might seriously consider. 'Oh, hello, Ambassador. Say, do you happen to know where your son's gone on his honeymoon? What's that? Well, no, he didn't actually invite me to the wedding--but that's understandable, don't you think, after what went down the last time? Oh, and, by the way, do you happen to know if he's planning to ever come back?'

Damn McCoy--and damn me, too, for actually considering it.

I might even do it, not in so many words...if I could just think of some way to phrase it that wouldn't sound so damned pathetic. Because the truth is, between worrying about him and thinking about replacing him and being furious with him for leaving me in the dark--the whole thing is driving me out of my head. I feel like Pandora, slamming the lid of the box down too late and chasing after hope like a fool.

Now I'm starting to get maudlin. I suppose I'm just avoiding the stack of personnel dossiers on my desk.

Not very logical, Captain..."

[stop]

Oh, Jim.

. . .

I never knew.

I never understood how clearly he saw what I thought I hid from view. I willingly believed in every false front he showed to me--and he accepted none of mine. I thought him invincible. I told him nothing and never knew how completely my evasions betrayed me.

He guessed at my concealed truths from the beginning, and in turn concealed from me quite effectively how much I hurt him with that silence.

Did McCoy realize what caused that nebulous, ambiguous ailment that plagued him that spring? He must have selected these particular log entries for a reason. Did the doctor perhaps understand too well--and did Jim ever realize the truth?

The symptoms are too familiar to ignore. A fever which had no cause. Dizziness and nausea that vanished as mysteriously as they came. I cannot deny the obvious; the affinity we shared then was even stronger than I knew.

Now, when it is too late, so many things become clear...

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, supplemental.

Short entry, as travel by hyperwarp shuttle tends to exhaust me beyond belief. Might have to visit McCoy tomorrow for some metabolic stimulators, if I can't shake it off. I'm not as young as I used to be.

He's still angry, of course, that he found out too late to make the ceremony. Well, Spock's going to get the brunt of that. I didn't have a clue before three days ago, any more than Bones did.

Returned to the Enterprise to find repairs nearly completed. Engineering estimates put our departure at oh-nine-hundred day after tomorrow. Spock will meet us at Alpha Centauri station. Not much of a honeymoon, if you ask me, but I guess Vulcans do these things differently.

Besides, no one asked me.

Damn his Vulcan ears, but I should have let him have it for springing it on us like that. Problem is, I actually like her. Gods help me, I actually think she might be the right one for him. I hope she is. If anyone deserves a little happiness in life, it's Spock.

Not bad, James T. That even sounded sincere. Needs work, but keep at it. Could be one day you'll be able to convince someone.

Oh, I'm tired. Maybe it's not just hyperwarp sickness. I feel like I just want to go to bed and not get up for a week.

That sounds so appealing I think I'll try it. Maybe they won't miss me..."

[stop]

This is... not easy. To listen to his voice, when I had all but forgotten the sound, the familiar cadence. To realize that it has been so long for us that I could forget. Months became a year, became two... how did that happen? I close my eyes and try to bring to mind the color of his, and I can see them, chestnut and copper, traced with pale gold, shot through with green in sunlight. A relief, though it pains me to remember. This memory at least has not been taken from me.

How could I have forgotten what his voice sounded like?

. . .

I can hear the echoes of him so clearly now.

* * *

I did meet the ship at Alpha Centauri. I remember the overwhelming relief which surged briefly in his eyes when I stepped onto the bridge, the first time I had done so in more than half a year. I do not think he allowed himself to hope, until that moment, that I ever would.

Quickly enough things returned to normal. But nothing was ever really the same, though it would be years before I really understood that. He tried, and I did, too--refusing all the while to admit the attempt, even to myself. We tried on the bridge. On landing parties. Over the chess board. We went through the motions, attempting to recapture some elusive thing we would not admit we had lost. When he looked at me, the unconditional trust I had always found in his eyes now bore shadows of fault lines.

Difficult to believe how swiftly those five years passed, swiftly as desert sand before a south wind.

Those years took on a pattern, as each shore leave found me at the dei'rah, making plans with Shara and the others for the coming endeavor. Each time I left on leave without telling him where I went, those fault lines slipped a little further. We did not ever meld, not even in the line of duty, as we once had. Perhaps he was angry with me, for having left him twice. Perhaps he feared that this, too, would have changed. Perhaps I feared it.

Meanwhile, I won my small victories--and never saw that giving in to me was his way of trying to close the steadily widening distance between us.

* * *

One night, after a particularly harrowing planetfall, I confronted him in his quarters.

"Come," he called, and I went in, found him at the desk, stubbornly trying to wade through the pile of reports which had accumulated in his absence.

"Captain."

He glanced up, then back down at the report he was signing. "Something you wanted to talk to me about, Spock?" I could not remember when I had seen him so completely exhausted.

I drew near, placed my hand upon the datapadd he was reaching for, preventing him from moving it to the space he had cleared in front of him. "You are sorely in need of rest, Captain, as per the orders of the Chief Medical Officer."

He sighed. Tugged the padd out from under my hand. "I can't let these go any longer. My department heads will stage a revolt." He was already scanning the screen.

"Recommend you allow me to complete them for you."

He gave a soft, regretful chuckle, not looking up. "Believe me, I wish I could."

I felt an unexpected surge of impatience. "There is no reason for you to write them yourself--a fact of which you are surely aware."

He shook his head. "You know I always do this myself. How else am I supposed to know what's happening on my own ship?"

"Perhaps if you adhered to recommended procedures, you would not now be in the position of disobeying medical orders, Captain." I did not mean it to sound so...peremptory. But I had succeeded in gaining his full attention. His eyes were on me now, narrowing dangerously.

"And just what do you mean by that, Mister Spock?"

I had gone too far to stop now. "You should never have beamed down to Ursa Loreli, captain. Most certainly not once we became aware of the hostage situation. It was a clear breach of command procedure."

I could see him trying to stay calm. Without much success. His pain and exhaustion were undermining his command composure. "Yes. It was. And it's not the first time I've acted on a hunch that later turned out to be right, either."

"You cannot know how events would have unfolded, had you not approached the compound alone. Perhaps your presence cost lives which might otherwise have been saved." As it almost cost yours, I thought, did not say.

I saw the damage I had wrought with my words flare in his face, his lips curling sharply downward. "You said yourself that the time I bought allowed you to locate the source of the force field and disable it. No one else would have done. Dammit, you know that! It was only my rank that persuaded them to talk to me at all."

"Talk! Is that what you call what they did to you?" I drew a sharp breath, hearing the edges of strained control in my own voice.

He stared at me for an instant, and then something shifted in his eyes. He sat back slowly, swallowing. "Spock, what is this really about?"

I looked away, unable to meet his gaze. Unable to look at his bruised face any more. The dark shadows where McCoy had repaired damaged capillaries made me want to strike at something.

"You are not thirty-three any more," I said finally.

"You think I don't know that?"

"Do you?"

His voice sounded choked. "What the hell are you getting at?"

I made myself look at him. Quoted, "'The captain shall not risk his person unnecessarily, and shall observe caution in assigning senior personnel to hazardous landing party duty, not excepting his own person.'"

"You know damn well that it doesn't always work that way."

"Almost never, in your case." There was that raw edge of stress again, mocking me.

"That sounds suspiciously like insubordination, Mister."

"Jim." I took a step closer, as close as the desk between us would allow. "It was sheer chance that I found the shield generator in time. You cannot continue to lead every landing party, take every risk, face every danger yourself. Your first duty must be to the ship."

"Are you questioning my competence?" he flared.

His weary anger gripped my heart. His face, tilted up toward mine, said plainly that I was provoking him beyond the limits of his endurance. "No," I said, a whisper.

"My commitment to the safety of the Enterprise?"

"Captain--no. But it is my duty to point out a repeated pattern of ship's policy with which I do not concur."

"I see." His voice was low and soft, with that deadly, quiet intensity I recognized too well. "So what you're telling me is that you think I'm too damned old to run this ship as I see fit? That I'd better start letting other people do my job for me, risk their lives for me, because I'm not as young as I used to be? Is that what you're trying to tell me, Commander?"

"You might have been killed." I did not mean to say it. But it was the one thing I had been thinking over and over since I first entered the room. It came out in a whisper, and instantly I wanted to snatch the words back. Unforgivable, that show of weakness.

I thought that he would snap at me again. But he said nothing. To my surprise, it was now he who looked away. His head was bowed. I could not see the faint bruises around his mouth any more.

Finally his eyes found their way to mine again. "Did I scare you?" he asked, in a small, disbelieving voice. "Is that it?"

His disbelief undid me. Of course he had! Did he think I had felt nothing when he left me in command and went into that viper's nest alone? When he failed to report in for three days? When by no small miracle I located the source of the force field and destroyed it, when I beamed him, battered and bleeding, to safety? Did he think I would not care?

But of course I could not say these things, and so I only stared at him mutely.

I could not tell him how he had frightened me, this time and all the other times. I could not show him anything but stiff Vulcan propriety, could not speak of this in any terms beyond Starfleet regulations. At last I broke the silence. "I shall not make any official report, if you will consider my position more carefully in the future."

I saw that he understood what I asked of him, and why--that he saw it all too clearly. We looked at one another for a long time, the awkwardness which had long been between us giving way, for that one moment, to unspoken communication.

"Understood, Mister Spock," he said finally. "Your recommendation is duly noted. I shall...endeavor to adhere more closely to standard landing party regulations from now on."

Thus I won a victory I had not expected, for that day he made a kind of promise to me; and though it was often very hard for him, he kept it. For the most part, he kept it.

T'Sharen said once, in those days, that she and Jim both asked more of me than any person should ask of another. "And you ask so little in return," she said. But she was wrong. I did not recognize then how very difficult keeping that promise would be for him, how significant it was that he would make it at all. I saw only my own fear, did not perceive the added weight he would now carry, each time a crewman died or suffered injury he might have borne himself.

I did not see how the accumulation of those burdens would become only one more fissure, pushing us apart.

* * *

The capriciousness of the universe always surprises me, though I should certainly know better by now. Is there any logic in the suspicion that fate practices its own brand of irony? That the pattern of my own life has evidenced more than its share?

There is no such thing as coincidence. My father taught me that, and any Vulcan will confirm it. Even I.

I am simply uncertain that I still believe the words.

It was nearly five years after my marriage to T'Sharen--near the end of the second exploratory mission--that we made our first clandestine expedition into Romulan space. At Shara's behest my father sent an official communique to Starfleet Command, requesting my presence on Vulcan to fulfill 'family obligations.' I still do not know how much Sarek knew then.

Jim brought me the summons himself; he had been on the bridge when the message came through. I was working in the data processing lab. His presence in the doorway engendered a sudden hush among the staff, and I looked up.

He inclined his head, his face as unreadable as I had ever seen it. "Mister Spock. How goes the reindexing project?"

"I estimate a completion time of nineteen hundred hours today, Captain."

"Very good." He paused, his eyes communicating some weighty significance I did not comprehend. "I have a message for you. If you have a moment?"

Most unusual, I thought. Were the message personal, he would scarcely interrupt my duty shift. However, any official communique would most likely have been sent directly to my terminal from the bridge. Obviously, he needed to discuss something with me, quite urgently, and did not wish to say so. Apprehension touched the nape of my neck. I got up and followed him out.

In the corridor, he tilted his face up at me. "Have you had lunch, Spock?"

"Negative."

"My quarters, then?" Again, there was some hidden significance to the question. I acquiesced, wondering what it was he needed to tell me.

Once there, he made no move to request nourishment from his yeoman, or from the computer. He turned, settled one hip on his desk and looked at me with concern.

"Spock, is everything all right?"

The question took me by surprise. "I am well, Captain. Why do you ask?"

He lowered his eyes, and for the first time I saw that he was holding a folded printout plast in his hand. "I'm not sure..."

"Sir, there is obviously something troubling you. Perhaps I can be of assistance."

He swallowed, and he looked up at me sideways, lines of worry tracing his mouth and eyes. "That's exactly what I was going to say to you." Reluctantly, he offered me the translucent sheet of printout.

I scanned it swiftly, then met his eyes again. "I do not understand. This is a request for me to return to my family estate. Why would I require assistance?"

He blinked, then shrugged a little self-consciously. "The way it was worded. 'Family obligation.'" He swallowed. "I was afraid it might be bad news."

His concern touched me. All the more so because it now meant that, for the first time, I would have to lie to him. Not a partial truth, not an omission, but a lie. "No," I reassured him, before the full realization of what I did could prevent me from speaking. "I was expecting this summons. Sarek merely requires my presence for support in the upcoming Council debates." I would have said more, but my throat closed. Better to keep it simple, or I would betray myself. I could not look directly at him. "But your concern is...appreciated."

He looked relieved. "Well. I'm glad I was mistaken." He stood up. "You're free to go whenever you're ready, of course. I've got Scotty prepping the Copernicus now."

I nodded, keeping my eyes down. There was a bitter taste in my mouth. In thirteen years of friendship, I had never before lied to him outright. "Thank you, Captain."

We stood awkwardly for a moment. I saw him shift his weight, and made myself look up. I read in his face the struggle of wanting to ask, of not wanting to. "I cannot be certain how long I will be gone," I said, sparing him the question I could read clearly in his eyes. "But it should not be more than six weeks, at the outside."

He only nodded, and I saw the flash of gratitude, swiftly put down. "Safe journey then, Mister Spock. You'll be missed." That quick relief stabbed at me, wounding me with the knowledge that I had brought him to this--that faced with the prospect of my temporary absence, he should feel the need to ask if he was ever going to see me again.

I nodded once in return and left, before he could read my guilt and ask dangerous questions.

* * *

There were six of us this time, including T'Sharen and myself. We crept across the neutral zone in our small scout ship like hooved herbivores skirting the mouth of a wolf den. But miraculously, the wolves slept on.

The four days we spent on ch'Rihan were a kind of awakening for all of us, an affirmation of all that we were risking, of our years of careful planning. The seheikk'he welcomed us like emissaries. Though every moment I lived in fear of discovery, though I could not sleep for nightmares of the Tal Shiar taking Shara--still I could not deny the brilliant, incandescent hope we saw in those faces when we told them who we were, why we had come. We stayed as long as we dared and then made our escape, turning back for Federation space, vowing to return.

. . .

There is no such thing as coincidence, my father says.

Perhaps not. Perhaps there is another name for the working of chance which made certain that James Kirk repeatedly faced the most difficult moments of his life without me--the one person he should have been able to rely on.

I fled to Gol, and they took his ship from him. I went to Hellguard and left him to face Nogura alone. I was on Dantria when I should have been on the bridge. Only his skill to thank that only three died in that Klingon border raid.

He sacrificed his ship and his son for me, and though I returned to him, I could not ever find the courage to show him what that meant to me.

I did not attend the launching of the Enterprise-B.

And the first time that I crossed the neutral zone with Shara, the promise that he had made me but two months before cost him the lives of sixty-three crewmen.

* * *

The situation with the Klingons was quite volatile in those days. Hostilities had been steadily growing more overt, the confrontations more violent. In five years we had faced off against a score of warships; had been forced to defend ourselves more than once.

I gleaned the outlines of the story from news holos, as we made for Vulcan at the fastest warp our scout ship could manage.

It happened on a world the Enterprise had not seen in a decade. On the very world, in fact, where Jim had once been forced to provide weapons to the planet's inhabitants, when Klingon interference was discovered. Subsequent to that mission, Starfleet operatives had tried to manage the ensuing conflict. But the Klingons had simply refused to give up. As the years had passed, the killing had slowly escalated.

Jim had a friend there, a man called Tyree. He was a man not meant for fighting; he was one of the first to die.

When the situation on Neural grew critical, theEnterprise was once again assigned to make an evaluation. As so often in the past, it was given to James Kirk to try to find a solution to a no- win scenario. And so he went, taking his ship into what was, essentially, a battle zone.

The news holos gave me only the generalities, which were these: no sooner did the Enterprise make orbit than she found herself set upon by a warship and a clutch of fighters. It seemed that the Klingons had staged a sweeping ground assault on the one city of any real size still standing, and the Enterprise had made an appearance at precisely the wrong moment.

Jim faced a difficult decision. He could not simply stand by and let the Klingons have their prize without a fight. On the other hand, he was outnumbered four to one, and the fighters could outmaneuver him and outrun him. Further, if he launched a counterassault on the ground, the Enterprise could not break orbit--or if she did, she would abandon her crewmen to face similarly disproportionate numbers on the surface.

His answer was to select one hundred men and women, mostly from security and tactical, to face the ground assault while the rest of the crew fought the battle in orbit. One hundred men and women armed with phasers and phaser rifles--to face a thousand Klingon troops. One undermanned starship to hold off four enemy vessels.

When I heard this report on the news, after the fact, I shuddered to think of him sitting in the command chair, fiercely deliberate, choosing which of his crew to send to their deaths. Choosing to stay aboard his ship and send them down alone. I could not help but wonder if he might have chosen differently, if I had been there. He knew that planet better than anyone. He would have trusted me to keep his ship safe for him. Did he stay on the bridge because I was not there to assume command? Because he thought that in the end the battle there would be the more crucial one?

Because he had made a promise to me?

Perhaps if he had beamed to the surface, he too would have been killed. Perhaps the battle in orbit would have been lost, and the ground troops abandoned.

But perhaps those sixty-three crewmen would not have died.

He did hold the Klingons at bay for most of a day, until reinforcements could arrive. He did receive a commendation for his actions that day. But none of that would bring back the dead, and hearing the casualty count on the news, I thought of what he would be feeling and pressured the pilot to coax a little more speed out of our craft's engines.

There is no such thing as coincidence. So why then did it seem as if the universe had conspired against me?

That trip across the neutral zone was the first time I had seen the woman I had married in ten months, and we had not had a single moment to ourselves. But my compelling need to return to the Enterprise would not wait.

I parted with Shara at Vulcan Space Central, and if I saw a darkness in her when she bid me safe journey, I did not let it stop me from going.

* * *

Jim did not come to meet me in the shuttle bay, though he had done so many times before.

There was so little time for us, those last weeks. When I finally caught up with the Enterprise at Starbase 11, he was deeply immersed in the grim business of assessing battle damage, compounded by the almost staggering load of administrative duties the end of a five-year mission required. I did not even unpack, but set to work, wading into my own extensive list of tasks immediately.

As hard as I tried to find time to speak with him, ship's business always seemed to prevent it. The shortage of crew took its toll on all of us; nearly every crewman was pulling double shifts, and he was no exception. I saw little of him, and what I saw did not reassure me. He looked drawn, his mouth set in grim lines. He had aged years in a matter of weeks. I did not think he was sleeping.

After six days passed in which I saw no improvement, I went to McCoy with my concerns.

"Spock, come in. Is it time for the inventory count already? I thought it was still early. Have a seat--oh, sorry. Let me move that."

He shifted a case of record tapes from the chair to a bare corner of his desk. I remained standing uncomfortably near the door. "Your report is not due for another four hours, Doctor. That is not the purpose of my visit."

That made him look up from the datapadd he was holding. His gaze swept over me swiftly, assessing. "Well, speak up. What can I do for you? I've got five million and one things to do, as you know."

"It is...about the captain."

For a moment his scrutiny intensified. He did not appear surprised.

"Right," he said at last, as if what he saw in my face satisfied him. "You're going to ask me if I've noticed that he's not eating, or sleeping." I nodded once, somewhat bemusedly. "Right." He looked about his office, and then about his person as if searching for something he had misplaced. After several moments of fruitless search, he caught sight of something under the haphazard stack of printouts on his desk, and his puzzled frown transformed into the light of discovery. His hand disappeared into the pile and emerged with the rim of a small, somewhat-used drinking glass pinched between thumb and forefinger.

He gave me a tired smile and dropped into his chair, waving me toward the one he had cleared for me. "Sit down, will you? I've been on my feet since oh-six-hundred, and if you're going to come down here and pester me when there's work to be done, then I'm gonna take a break." To my relief what he poured into his glass was not bourbon, but something which might once have been coffee, from a nearby warmer. He gave a lopsided smile, perceiving the direction of my glance. "I know, I'm ruining my reputation as a reprobate. Don't tell anyone, all right?"

"As you wish."

He took a sip of the dark liquid, made a face. "So... you're worried about Jim. Big surprise. I am, too, as far as that goes. But ask me what you came to ask."

I found it...disconcerting to be so easily understood by him.

"Has he spoken to you? About what occurred on Neural?"

McCoy shook his head wearily. "Not a word. I've done my damnedest to corner him several times, but the man is a master at eluding my clutches. He must've taken lessons from you."

"What is your...professional evaluation of his mental condition?"

"Not good." He had not hesitated. "Between losing so many people and now the Enterprise too--"

I leaned forward in surprise. "The Enterprise? Has he received new orders already? He said nothing to me."

McCoy tried the coffee again, grimaced more elaborately, then gave up. He set the glass of dubious liquid on top of the pile in front of him and leaned back, folding his hands across his abdomen. "Not that I know of. But you know as well as I do that our chances aren't good. Before this, maybe Starfleet Command would have gone for a refit. But hell, Spock. You're in charge of the repair detail. You know what kind of damage we took."

I was thinking of the record tapes I had watched, on the night I returned from Vulcan. The narrowness with which my shipmates had escaped destruction had been...

Even days after the fact, I had scarcely been able to watch with my control intact.

But McCoy was going on. "The ship's thirty years old. She's had four refits already. What are the chances that Nogura'll okay a fifth? We'll be lucky to make it back to Earth at warp one. And if I think Jim's chances of another deep-space mission are pretty low, you can bet Jim knows it too. How many starships do they have to go around, after all? These last five years, Nogura's had him on borrowed time. It's pretty damned likely that the old reptile will grab hold of those Admiral's stripes and reel Jim in as soon as we get within shouting distance of San Francisco."

"What--" I had to stop, clear my throat, for the word had emerged a hoarse croak. "What effect do you predict another ground assignment will have on him?"

The doctor sighed. "Two weeks ago, I would have said he could take it. It would've been hard on him, but he knew he was lucky to get this mission, after V'Ger. But now?" His hands moved in a gesture of helplessness. "He'll see it as a punishment--and one he feels he deserves. You know how he is. It tears something out of him every time he loses a crewman. This... well, it's tearing him up. He hasn't said so to me, but he has to be living in a hell of self-purgatory right now. Doesn't matter that not one of those deaths was his fault, that he saved three hundred and seventy-two people against impossible odds. All he can see is that he should have been down there with them."

My lungs felt as though a weight were compressing them, slowly pushing all the oxygen out of my body. I wanted to swallow against that pressure, didn't dare reveal that weakness to him.

He answered the question I did not ask. "That's my evaluation as his doctor, and as his friend. He needs to talk about it. But I don't think I'm the one he needs to talk to." His tone softened. "He may value my opinion on medical matters, but when it comes to command decisions, anything I have to say doesn't count for a hill of beans."

His gaze was too sharp, saw too much. I could not hold to it. "He barely tolerates my presence in the room."

"Not surprised. But you've got to keep trying."

I looked up. Exceedingly difficult, to admit I needed his help. "Do you have any suggestions?"

The tired lines of his face reflected some measure of empathy. "One." He held my gaze with a look that could have chipped stone. "Don't wait much longer. The man's got one hell of an arsenal of defense mechanisms. If somebody doesn't reach him soon, he'll close up so tight that even you won't be able to pry his shell open."

I had already shown too many vulnerabilities to him. One more could not make much difference. "Doctor, I am... inexperienced in these matters. What do I say?"

"The truth, Spock." He looked on me with a vast, almost unendurable understanding. "That you're worried about him. That he did the right thing. That it wasn't his fault. And Spock, if you can..." He hesitated; then his head lifted with resolve. "If you can, tell him that you're not going to leave him again."

* * *

Two days passed before I mustered sufficient courage to seek him out. I had hoped to catch him in his quarters. But in forty-six hours he had gone there only to change clothes and shower, and--I suspected--to administer some form of artificial stimulant. Now that I was watching him more closely, I realized that what I had assumed was the weariness of too little sleep was actually the driven exhaustion of no sleep at all.

In the end I resorted to subterfuge, and enlisted the doctor's assistance. We were five days out of Earth orbit, and McCoy's final evaluation report was due. He summoned Jim to sickbay where I, in McCoy's office, sat at the doctor's terminal and tried to project the aura of a man who was proceeding matter- of-factly about his duties.

I heard him come into sickbay from the corridor, heard McCoy greet him. The doctor remarked on his fatigued appearance, to which Jim sighed impatiently.

"I don't want to hear about it, Doctor. I've got too much to do. If you want to give me a vitamin shot, go ahead. I don't have time for a nap."

"All right, for now." I heard the hiss of the hypospray. "But I want you to get at least six hours sleep in the next twenty- four, or you and I are gonna talk again."

Their voices grew more clearly audible as they crossed sickbay toward the office where I waited. Jim made a noncommittal sound, which I knew was only avoidance. "We'll see." His tone gentled. "I'll do my best, Bones." And then he came through the door behind me, the force of his presence striking me like an unexpected blast of heat off the Forge at sunset. I glanced up as he came in.

"Spock," he said, surprised. I nodded, casually, once, and returned my attention to the terminal screen. But he was so far off his usual form that he did not question my presence there, or the improbability of it. He only dropped into McCoy's spare chair and looked up at the doctor, who had followed him in. "See? I'm not the only one who's too busy to sleep."

"Yeah, but Spock doesn't look like death warmed over. You do. Believe me, Jim, I'm an equal opportunity pain in the you- know-what. When his blood pressure skyrockets to twice what it should be, I'll harass him, too." I started at that, almost turned around in dismay.

"Enough, McCoy," Jim warned. I felt his eyes on me, though I was not looking at him. "Let's have that report."

The doctor fished a disk out of the pile on his desk, handed it to him. "It's all there, Captain. Enjoy. It makes for exciting reading." He turned and leaned casually against the front of the desk, folding his arms. "You hear anything from Command yet?"

This was my cue; I stopped pretending to work and turned, waiting to see what he would say.

Jim sighed, passing a tired hand over his face. "Nothing. But I'm not terribly hopeful."

McCoy grunted. "Maybe no news is good news."

"I wish I shared your optimism."

Privately, I agreed with him. But I very much wanted to ease the bleak despair I perceived seeping beyond the edges of his nonchalant facade.

"My mother has a saying which may be appropriate," I offered.

He looked at me expectantly. It was the first time I had spoken to him of anything but ship's business in days.

I made a show of remembering. "I believe the proper phrase would be, 'Good news always sleeps 'til noon.'"

For an instant, Jim managed a flash of genuine amusement. He traded glances with McCoy. "From Amanda's lips to Morrow's ear."

The doctor nodded. "Amen. You two may drive me to distraction, but I'm not quite ready to get rid of you yet." He yawned then--in rather overly dramatic fashion, I thought. "Well, you all might not need to sleep, but I'm an old man, and I do. Think I'll go hit the sack, and clean up this mess in the morning." He stood, and headed for the door, waving Jim back down into his chair as the captain started to rise. "Stay and set a spell, Captain. If you won't get some sleep for me, the least you can do is make me happy and take a little break."

Jim grumbled, but sank back into his chair too readily. I saw in his face that he knew his body would not take much more neglect. "Got any coffee?" he called after McCoy's retreating form.

"I wouldn't recommend it," I said, sotto voce, even as McCoy called back cheerfully, "Not that won't kill you!"

Jim turned back to me, disappointment in the set of his mouth. Then his eyes met mine and I saw the realization even as it reached him. He was so tired that he had, for a moment, forgotten that he was avoiding me, and why. For that one moment we had only been Kirk and Spock and McCoy, exchanging parries in the way we had done a thousand times before, and he had forgotten the weight he had been carrying for days. It settled on him visibly, dragging his shoulders downward.

I got up, came around the front of McCoy's desk. It had been instinct that pulled me toward him, and once there, I did not know what to say. "Jim, I..."

He closed his eyes, but not before I could see his weary defenses rise. "Spock, don't."

I felt unbearably awkward, standing less than a meter in front of him, with him sitting hunched forward, hands clenched together between his knees. But now he could not rise without standing too close to me; I had inadvertently cut off his avenue of escape.

Illogical not to take advantage of the opportunity.

"Captain, may I pose a question?"

I saw that he wanted to say no. But more than that, he wanted to talk about what had happened. Needed to talk about it.

"If you must," he said, detachment and mild impatience in his face, open vulnerability in his tone. He would not look at me. But it was not too late... he would listen to me, his tense posture said. He would listen, up to a point. I plunged ahead, knowing I would have only one chance.

"If our positions had been reversed--if I had been in command of the Enterprise, and if the outcome on Neural had been the same... would you now condemn me for my actions?"

His lips curled back faintly. "Moot point. You weren't in command."

"Moot... but not irrelevant. You know the answer."

"Do I?" he asked faintly. He still would not look at me.

"If I had been in command, and if events had unfolded just as they did--"

His eyes flew open, and he glared at me with a heat which made me feel singed. "You weren't in command!"

His white rage and pain sucked the air out of my lungs. "I am aware of that," I managed. I saw, then, what I had feared. He would condemn me, did condemn me, for leaving him to face that decision alone.

He was on his feet, and I fell back a step, the force of his physical presence overwhelming at such close quarters. He shoved past me, too desperate for escape to care about maintaining personal distance. He turned for the door.

"Jim!" There was far too much feeling in that one word, but I could not spare thought for it now. It was enough that it had stopped him. He froze in the doorway, his back to me, two meters away. I tried to gain oxygen sufficient for speech; there did not seem to be any in the room. "I am sorry," I said. It was inadequate. But I could not think of words that would have sufficed. "I am sorry I was not there."

Every muscle in his compact frame tensed. I saw his jaw clench painfully. "Doesn't matter. My responsibility."

Of course it was. It always was. I took a step toward him, incongruously aware of his modest stature. So easy to forget, for his personality gave the impression of a much larger man. So easy to take for granted the burdens he carried for all of us. "You would not blame me," I said. "If I had chosen exactly as you did, you would not blame me. There was no better option. Your choice of action was logical, Captain."

"Logical?" He made a choked sound. "I knew that planet better than anyone. I knew the city's layout--"

"I saw the logs." I drew nearer still, intent on reaching him. He was talking to me, was listening to me. But his body was still poised for flight. "There is a ninety-three point two six percent probability that another commander would have lost the battle in orbit. There would then have been no rescue for the personnel on the planet's surface."

I saw a faint shudder run through him. But the quoting of odds had reached him, where my assurances had not. He did not answer, and I hurried to pursue my advantage. "Three hundred and seventy-two lives were saved, and uncounted thousands in the city proper. As a direct result of your actions, Captain."

"Not good enough. I should have been able to do more."

"Starfleet Command thought differently."

He half-turned, abruptly, as if stung. "They weren't there!" He still did not look at me, but I could see his profile now, could read the struggle he was making to believe me, to trust what I was telling him. Could read easily the guilt he felt for receiving a commendation for an incident in which sixty- three crewmen died.

"No," I agreed. "They were not. They never are. That is why they put their trust in those rare individuals capable of making difficult decisions. Those who can salvage some form of victory from an inevitable defeat. As you did. Jim, it wasn't your fault."

"You weren't there," he whispered. But some of the tension had bled out of his stance; I thought perhaps he was listening to me, in spite of himself.

Then he turned the rest of the way to face me, and the tight agony in his face shifted, became something else entirely. "Why weren't you?"

I was entirely unprepared for the question.

"Sir?"

His eyes on mine were dark with sudden intensity. The skin drew taught across his cheekbones. "Where did you go, Spock? Can't you tell me?"

I held myself still against the urge to back away from him. "I do not know what you--"

His lips thinned. And I realized--he must have tried to reach me at my father's house. In the aftermath of the battle, he must have tried. Must have learned that I had lied to him.

The pressure which closed on my lungs and heart felt like the sudden pull of gravity after weightlessness. Oh, no--not like this. Not now. Not this moment, when more than anything in the universe he needed to be able to trust me. I thought of the extremity of need which would have compelled him to make that call, the numb disbelief when he learned that I was not on Vulcan at all, that Sarek in fact could tell him nothing of where I had gone, or why--for Sarek himself was not even in the Eridani system.

It had been the first lie I had ever told him; why had I managed it so very badly?

I became aware, belatedly, of what my face was revealing.

"Jim..."

His chin lifted slightly, as if he braced himself for a blow.

I would have told him. In that one moment, I would have broken my word and told him everything. I am... shamed by that. Nevertheless, in that place and time I would have sacrificed honor willingly, and hoped that T'Sharen would forgive me after the fact.

However, just then a faint vibration passed through the deck, up through the soles of our feet. The laboring engines shuddered, steadied, and the ship limped onward toward Earth.

A moment only. But suddenly I was thinking of Nogura, and Morrow, of the grueling debriefings Jim would face in less than a week. I saw the knowledge reflected in his eyes, as he must have seen it in mine: McCoy was right. The Enterprise might be rebuilt, refitted--but she would never see another deep space mission. In a matter of days, Jim's future would once again be on the line.

His burdens were heavy enough. The last thing he would need, in the weeks to come, was inside knowledge of the dei'rah's activities on ch'Rihan. Though technically T'Sharen and the rest of us broke no laws, we risked much on the slim chance of unification. For us, that risk was an acceptable one; but it could hardly be expected that Starfleet and the Federation Council would see things the same way.

Can't you tell me? he had asked. My throat closed. It was hard, very hard to say the words.

"Jim... I cannot."

His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. I saw the muscle in his jaw leap. He only looked at me for a moment, held himself so still that he might have been made of stone. Then he started to turn away.

"Please," I said, not caring what it sounded like. "You must believe that I--"

But he looked back over his shoulder, freezing me where I stood. I don't have to believe anything you say, that look said, and I nearly flinched from it. At last he dropped his gaze, and I could breathe again. "It's all right," he said, "I understand. You don't owe me any explanations. Your life is your own--it's past time I realized that. I've kept you from living it long enough."

There was a heavy significance to his words which eluded me. "I do not believe I comprehend your meaning."

At last he looked directly at me. "Don't you?" He drew a deep breath, and I saw the effort it was costing him just to stay on his feet. "You've turned down three promotions in five years, Spock." There were shades of irony in the attempt at a smile he made. "You do realize they're not going to let you get away with it again."

"Admiral Morrow cannot force me into a decision."

The irony darkened into anger. Suddenly I could see the buried rage again, the bleak frustration he had always felt when crewmen died under his command. "Dammit, Spock, don't you realize that you've got a better chance at getting another ship than I do? God knows you deserve it, after all these years! Does it mean so little to you, that you would casually throw it away?"

I drew back. What exactly were we discussing here? "Not casually. You know I have never wished to command."

He took one step toward me, following, fists clenched. "What will you do, then? Resign again?"

And as easily as that, I perceived that it was not only anger darkening his face, but apprehension, and the unstrung look of a man who believes everything in his life is slipping between his fingers.

I wanted more than anything to be able to make promises to him. I wanted to find the words that would let him trust me, wanted to tell him that he would never again need me and find me absent from his side.

But I had lied to him once already.

I forced myself to stop retreating before him, struggled for purchase against treacherous terrain. "I do not know for certain what I will do, when the time comes. You know that I will make any decision that is to be made--logically." I swallowed. "It would be my preference to continue to serve... at your side."

He made a sound; it might have been disbelief, or something else entirely. I could not tell. The sudden sharp ache in my throat made speech difficult.

"But Jim, if that should prove impossible, then you must know that one thing has not changed, and will not. I have been, and hope to always be, your friend."

His eyes on mine were so wide and bright that I almost could not look at them. He swallowed visibly, made a motion as if he would reach out to me. He did not, only cleared his throat of some obstruction, finally looked away.

"Ah, Spock. You really are a piece of work, you know that?"

It was said gently, and I saw the anger and the apprehension, the tension and the fiercely controlled hurt all run out of him at once, and suddenly he looked as if he might fall down from weariness. But there was light in his eyes again, a light that had been absent too long.

"The doctor has frequently told me so," I concurred, wanting very much to see more of that light.

He gave a low snort of something like laughter. "Yes, well, he's right. As usual." He sobered, drew a deep breath. "All right. I am too damned tired to be having this conversation anymore. Listen, I know you've got your hands full, but... can I ask you to help me with something tomorrow?"

This was clearly not an order, but an appeal of a more personal nature. I could only nod.

"I want to organize a memorial service. For the crewmen we lost. I could... use your help."

It was in that moment, when he tentatively offered his faith in me once more, that I realized what I was risking with my clumsy deceptions.

"Of course." It was all I could manage.

He sighed heavily, put one hand to the back of his neck, massaging. "I've got to go to bed."

The tightness in my throat eased somewhat. "Very well, Captain." I was surprised to note that the intonation sounded almost normal.

At my acquiescence he had turned, was halfway to the door. Suddenly I feared to let him leave the room without some assurance, some indication that I had indeed reached him, that we had not lost everything. My thoughts were in turmoil, and I said the first neutral thing I could think of. "Shall we meet for breakfast tomorrow?"

My captain turned back for a moment. He gave me a long, assessing look, as if measuring something he saw in my eyes, weighing trust as if it were a tangible thing, to be counted in degrees. What conclusion he made I did not know. At last he nodded, and when he spoke he sounded like himself again. "Sounds good," he said, turning once more for the door. He hesitated in the doorway, back to me. "The usual time?"

"Agreed." I had to draw breath then, for I had forgotten for a moment to continue doing so. "Good night, Jim."

I saw him nod, stiffly. Then he went out.

* * *

I have been procrastinating.

For some time my screen has displayed the stardate of the next file on the record tape. The date indicates that this entry was made during that difficult time, the first days after we returned to Earth.

It has become evident that McCoy chose these particular log entries with some design, though what it might be I would not presume to speculate. Did he hope to punish me with these revelations? It would be unlike him to wish another pain, even I--but grief often elicits uncharacteristic behavior in humans.

Which is, of course, why I have delayed playing the next entry; I am not certain I wish to hear what Jim would have had to say about me, in those days.

Our conversation in Sickbay seemed to ease something in him, but did not entirely erase the darkness behind his eyes. He would not talk to me, or to McCoy. We endured mission debriefings by day; in the evenings, the three of us would meet for dinner on the station promenade, as if nothing had changed and we were still dining in the mess hall on the Enterprise. As if by common consent we did not talk about the ship, about the evaluations going on night and day aboard her, about decisions rapidly approaching.

They did take her from him, in the end. Small consolation that she was not to be scrapped, but converted into a training vessel, confined to short cruises within the Solar System. She became a caged bird--and he did, too, though he was wise enough to refuse the prestigious, showy position Nogura offered him at Headquarters. He had learned from his mistakes; he took a lesser advisory position, and applied to the Academy instead.

McCoy and Uhura chose at once to go with him. As for me... Morrow offered me command of a science vessel, was surprised when I declined. "What of the Enterprise?" I asked him. "Who will command her?"

"That is... undecided."

"Are you aware that Admiral Kirk has filed for a teaching position at the Academy?"

"I am aware of it, Captain."

That nomenclature still sounded odd, when applied to myself.

"As Enterprise is to be used as a training vessel, do you intend to assign her command to a member of the faculty?"

"Captain Spock, are you interrogating me on personnel matters just for sport? Or do you have an objective?"

I raised a calculated eyebrow at him, making it clear that he could be certain I always had an objective. "I am merely attempting to ascertain the capacity in which I might best serve the Fleet at this time."

Morrow gave me a dry look. "Ah. Of course. Most logical." He paced the breadth of his office, stood with his back to me, looking out across the great hangar bay. Beyond the floor-to- ceiling pane, the Enterprise hung motionless. "To answer your question, we offered it to him. He turned it down."

That gave me pause. Turned it down? Had I heard correctly? He had said nothing to me, to McCoy--to anyone of this.

Involuntarily, my eyes were drawn to the silhouette of the ship I had called home for most of my adult life. In the bay, with supports and struts for a backdrop instead of stars, she looked--clumsy. Cumbersome. She might never again soar the vast spaces between stars.

And then I understood.

He could not bear it. Better a clean break, than to reduce himself and his ship to this limited existence. I saw her caged there, and understood exactly why he would have refused. Better by far, he would have thought, to let another command her and to remember her as she was.

Then I weighed that, considering. It was an unexpected thought--and one which felt immediately right. Yes. If he could not keep her, then he would want her in good hands. He would need to know that she was commanded by someone who would guard her well.

My certainty followed swiftly.

"Admiral, I believe that I, too, shall submit an application to Starfleet Academy. It appears that you are in need of a Field Training Officer..."

Two more days of waiting followed. The debriefings gradually drew to a close--and Jim grew steadily more withdrawn. I tried and tried again to read him, without success. Once or twice I saw him looking at me as if I were a stranger he had never seen before. Then, I longed to know what name to give that shuttered, lost look.

But now...

Now I fear to know what he was seeing when he looked at me.

Enough. The sound of my own cowardice sickens me. What am I afraid of? He is dead, and never shall he endanger my comfortable isolation with his words or his presence again.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 7684.3:

Won't be too many more of these, it seems. In fact, this might be the last for a while. As of yesterday, I'm just a teacher--and Spock's the captain of the Enterprise.

I took the bridge crew to Filo's tonight. That has to have been one of the most surreal evenings I've spent in a long time. We're like fish out of water, when you take away the ship. It's probably significant that we don't know what to do with ourselves without a crisis to deal with, some sort of emergency to defuse. Well, Bones will be all right. Uhura and Sulu and Chekov will. I suppose it's really me and Scotty who'll have the hardest time adjusting--me most of all.

Then there's Spock. I wish to god I knew what he was thinking tonight. What he was thinking when he took command of the Enterprise. Better him than someone else... but it's hard to think about being stuck in an office again when he'll be up there, out there. It's hard to think about asking his permission to board my own ship.

I guess I know that he must have done it for my sake. So why am I so angry?

Ah, Spock. You're a stranger all of a sudden. When did that happen? When I started asking questions you couldn't answer? Or when you started lying to me?

That's what I was going to ask him, tonight, when I followed him out of the restaurant. Oh, I had all manner of questions to pose to my Vulcan friend. I was angry, I admit that--even though I probably had no right to be. I followed him out of the restaurant and all the way back to his quarters at the base, fully prepared to make a fool of myself.

But I didn't know she would be there. How could I? He didn't even know she was coming, from the sound of it.

I certainly didn't mean to eavesdrop.

That's no excuse, of course. I can't think of an excuse that will come close to explaining why I stood there, behind the pillar, listening to the whole thing. I could say I didn't want to reveal my presence, and maybe make things worse between them than they already were.

But that would be a lie, and not a very good one. The truth is that I stayed hidden, and listened--and ate up every word.

God, I despise myself right now. Because tomorrow this part of my life will be over, and my ship won't be mine any more--and all I can think about is what he said. And about how he sounded when he said it.

"I cannot leave him now," he told her. "And I will not."

. . .

I don't know which one of us to pity most: Spock, for trying to be everything to everyone--or me, for needing to hear that so badly that I'd stoop to spying on my best friend.

The thing is, it didn't sound like a lie. I can't trust myself to know that any more, of course. But all the same--when he said it, it sounded like the truth."

[stop]

I am...

I do not know what to call this reaction.

That night--oh, yes, I remember that night, though I have not thought of it in years. Surreal, Jim called it. Unreal, rather, for it was a moment out of time. I remember those words. I remember Shara's eyes when I said them.

I did not ever know that he heard us, that night, calmly arguing the shape of our marriage and our future on the portico at base Headquarters.

Filo's... Filomena's, yes. I remember. When I received confirmation of my appointment to the Academy staff, I sent word to T'Sharen via subspace. As I recorded my missive to her, I noticed a flashing icon denoting an incoming message. I completed my own transmission and accessed the waiting file.

It was from Jim. Text only, sent that morning, an invitation to dinner at a rather exceptional San Francisco restaurant, for eight the next evening. By then he and I and the rest of the command crew would be finished at Headquarters, our four week furlough begun. I sent my acceptance, not without some anticipation.

I did not anticipate the appearance of my wife.

* * *

At precisely 20:00 hours the following evening, I arrived at the appointed establishment. The selected restaurant was located on the water not far from the Presidio, and I found it without difficulty.

An open breezeway passed through from the street to a large, cobbled brick patio, encircled by a low brick wall with planters atop it. Sloping cliffs descended from the edge of the patio some twenty meters to the surf. Numerous tables filled the open courtyard. I could not at first locate my commanding officer, but looking about, I caught sight of a gentleman in Terran formal wear standing at a podium off to one side of the breezeway.

The sun was setting behind me as I approached the maitre d'.

"May I help you, sir?"

"Can you direct me to Admiral Kirkís table?"

He beamed. "Ah, yes. Very good sir. This way please."

The man led me around the curve of the building, down three steps to a second patio adjacent to the first. There I caught sight of him, leaning back casually in a cushioned wrought iron chair, drink in hand, ankles crossed--and I realized, only then, that I had misunderstood.

Jim was chuckling at something Commander Uhura had said, and as I reached the bottom of the steps he looked up, including me in his expansive good humor. The two of them sat at a large round table set for seven, and though we were the only ones present, it was clear that four more were expected.

I had assumed, for no reason I could now fathom, that the invitation had been meant for me alone.

The gas lamps were coming on as the maitre d' seated me to Jim's right, asking for my beverage order and offering refills to my companions. They acquiesced readily, I ordered Terran spring water--a weakness I seldom indulged--and the man left us.

Jim offered me an unrestrained version of his warm smile, an expression I had not seen him wear in many months. "Glad you could make it, my friend. You can help us get the party started!"

The smile unsettled me in its unfamiliarity; though I was pleased to see him relaxed, his eyes were a fraction too bright, his color slightly high. Involuntarily I glanced at the drink he held, saw that it was a deep amber, most likely some potent intoxicant. I looked sidelong at Uhura, but she seemed unconcerned. At last I met Jim's eyes again, only to see that he had followed the direction of my gaze and understood, too well. His smile widened dangerously, his eyes glittering more brightly still. As if daring me to judge him, he tossed back the remainder of his drink and set the glass deliberately on the table. His eyes lowered.

"Congratulations on the Enterprise," he said, as if it were an afterthought. But his voice was a fraction too low, his inflection a fraction too even. It was a tone I had heard him use under point of a Klingon disruptor.

I experienced the unexpected sense that something cold and tight had closed around my heart. He had misunderstood--or I had.

I took her because you did not, I wanted to say. I wanted to keep her safe for you. Is that not what you wanted?

Then I perceived that he had understood, perfectly, why I would accept command of his ship when I had said Morrow would not force me into such a position. His anger was not directed at me--or at least, he believed it was not. His face held a curious contradiction of gratitude and defiance, despair and something else which might have been relief.

At least it's done now, that look said. It's out of my hands. Just then I happened to glance down at his hand curled around his empty glass. His knuckles showed white.

The silence stretched a moment too long, and Uhura broke it. "Have either of you heard from Pavel? Hikaru told me Captain Terrell requested him aboard the Reliant."

Jim turned his attention to her. I saw him force his body to relax. "He's accepted. They ship out next week."

"Really? That's wonderful. I'm so glad the posting was still open."

"Yes, he and Clark should make a good team. Terrell's very even-keeled. He'll provide a better example for a volatile officer like Chekov than I ever did." He did not, quite, look at me. "A captain and first officer ought to balance each other like that."

Uhura smiled one of her open, disarming smiles. "I think Pavel might disagree with you on the 'better example' portion of that. If he'd had the choice, he would have stayed with the Enterprise. All of us would have."

Her intentions were admirable, but it was the wrong approach. I could see Jim struggling to keep his answer even. "I know that, Nyota. But it's time you all got the responsibility you deserve. You should have made first officer years ago, and he's missed chances, too. Sulu might have gotten a ship of his own by now, if not for his loyalty to me."

"To all of us," she corrected. "You shouldn't take all of the burden--or all the credit. We're a team, and we work well together. That counts for more than individual career aspirations."

He smiled tiredly at her, showing that he appreciated her attempt to free him from responsibility, but did not accept it. "We were a hell of a team," he said, not looking at either of us. "But those days are past. It's time to move on."

But she shook her head. "No, Admiral. You're wrong. We might be moving on, for now, but we'll always be a team."

"Amen, my dear. Glad to hear somebody's talking sense. Now where's the bourbon?"

I had been so intent on the exchange that I had not noticed McCoy's arrival. He dropped into the chair across the table and grinned companionably at me.

"Spock agrees with me," Jim broke in. "Don't you, Spock? Change is logical, after all."

I ignored, for the moment, his assumptive usurpation of my convictions, and met his eyes pointedly. "As you say. But some things remain constant."

It was he who looked away. "Everything changes."

McCoy's gaze shifted to him, surprised by the tone. I saw him study Jim for a moment, saw him register the unnaturally high color in the Admiral's cheeks. He sat back a little, turning back to me. "Everything but Spock," he quipped. "That blasted Vulcan's as stubborn as ever, and he doesn't look a day older, either." It was said with all his usual acrimony, but what I read in his gaze was an apology. I understood; he was attempting to lighten the mood at my expense, and asking my forbearance.

"Indeed." I made a show of studying the doctor across from me. Taking my cue. "Evidence suggests that some things never change, no matter how much one might wish them to."

Jim laughed. "You're right, Spock. Some things do remain constant. If the two of you ever stop bickering we'll know the universe has ended."

"I do not bicker," I said with carefully calculated dignity, and this time all three of them expressed amusement.

"In a pig's--pardon me, 'in the ocular orifice of a member of the Suidae family.'" McCoy lifted one eyebrow for emphasis. It was a creditable impersonation, if somewhat exaggerated.

"Doctor, I had no idea your Latin was so practiced," I said drily.

"Yeah, they still make you learn that in medical school." His expression was a self-satisfied one. I saw out of the corner of one eye that Jim was still grinning, waiting for my response. I did not wish to disappoint him.

"Oh?" I gave my best attempt at innocence. "I did not realize you had attended medical school. I had assumed that you owed your practical successes largely to the munificence of fortune."

McCoy evinced mock outrage. "I thought you said you didn't bicker."

"I do not. Nor do I believe in luck. Which is why I make it a policy to avoid your ministrations as assiduously as possible."

"Why you greenblooded--"

Jim was already laughing again.

"--smug, superior son of a--"

Commander Uhura could no longer contain her mirth; she was covering her mouth with her hand.

"--see if I ever patch up your scrawny hide again!"

But even McCoy was grinning now, though it only showed in his eyes. Mission accomplished, that look said, and for an instant I let him see my own approval of his methods.

He was right, years ago, when he told me that there is a healing to be found in shared laughter that cannot be equaled by empirical medicine. His blue eyes on mine shone with an uncomplicated camaraderie I had seldom known from him. I must admit I welcomed it.

Thus Commander Scott came upon us in the deepening twilight. He was followed shortly by Sulu and Chekov, as the last edge of the sun sank below the horizon. Each of the three evidenced varying degrees of weariness and melancholy. But they came upon the four of us laughing--three aloud and one silently--and for a time they too forgot about fatigue and the uncertain future, and joined us.

For once we did not feel the constraints of duty or responsibility. For once we were only seven unlikely companions, bound by fellowship alone. And so unburdened, the former officers of the Enterprise shared a rare few hours free together under the stars.

* * *

We remained at the restaurant until well after the last patrons had gone. A vast quantity of food and drink--particularly the latter--had been consumed, and the evidence littered the table before us. Though earlier our gathering had manifested a celebratory air, my companions had long since subsided to quiet reminiscence and speculation on the future.

The lamps were guttering, the sea wind turned chill. I was grateful for my woolen mantle.

I believe each of us was somewhat reluctant to be the first to leave. I saw Chekov yawn, struggling to focus on the tale Scott was relating, but neither gave any sign of retiring for the evening. McCoy looked like he might doze off in his bourbon at any moment. Uhura and Sulu were conversing in low tones, heads close together. I could not hear what they were saying.

Beside me, Jim sat watching the waves below. He had said nothing for fifteen minutes. I found myself watching him, wondering what thoughts flitted behind that distant gaze.

I had seen him down a considerable quantity of the amber liquor, though he had displayed no further signs of intoxication beyond his heightened color, his brighter-than- normal gaze. His ill humor had not returned. Still, he had remained subdued, content to listen to the conversations around him without participating, content to drink his dinner while leaving his food mostly untouched. In short, he was not himself.

As I watched him watch the sea, I tested and discarded a dozen things I might have said to him. None of them were right. Either not personal enough or far too much so, none of the things that I might say in that mixed company would communicate to him what I wished him to know.

At last he turned, and I saw at once that he had not been unaware of my scrutiny. Perhaps he, too, had been searching for the right words. For the first time in weeks I felt him make an effort to reach out, to reach back to me.

I held that look in silence. His gaze felt heavy on mine, dangerous, as if the weight of it might overpower me, might crush me. I tried to let him know without words that I would welcome anything he might say to me. I wished that he might, as he so often had in the past, put into words what I could not express.

I wished that we might have been alone.

Then something shifted in his face, perhaps an awareness of where we were, of McCoy's keen eyes, watching us from behind his pose of sleepy disinterest. Or perhaps he simply found the distance between us had grown too great to bridge so easily. He took a slow sip of his whiskey, and looked away.

I cannot... I cannot accurately name what I felt when he turned back to watching the sea without a word. I felt a sudden pressure on my ears and throat which could find no release. There was a slow sinking in my abdomen. It felt like the moment when one perceives a life-threat, before the adrenaline rush of self-preservation.

Which is what followed. Before I knew what I had done, I had risen to my feet, taken a step backward.

Five pairs of eyes rose in response; he did not turn. The habit of years demanded that I maintain my calm, and I did so, making regretful farewells, expressions of good will. I maintained that calm long enough to cover the distance to the street.

And then I fled into the night, wrapping my cloak around me as if it were winter, and not a mild September evening.

. . .

A prevarication.

Say it, a lie.

I said I could not name the thing I felt, the thing which rose in me that night when he looked at me and did not speak. I lied. I know its name and its shape, and merely did not wish to face the truth.

I was afraid. I was afraid, and what I feared was this: under the night sky in a restaurant in San Francisco, I had learned something of myself I had not wished to know. For in that moment when he might have spoken and did not, what I felt first and strongest was despair.

I did not know until then how much his silence had grieved me, how badly I wished for an end to the awkwardness between us. Until he turned away from me, I did not know that I would have done anything to win his trust again.

If he had spoken one word of friendship to me, I would have told him everything--alone, if possible, but in front of five onlookers if necessary. I would not have cared. One word from him and I would have been undone.

That frightened me as badly as any life-threat I had ever encountered.

I fled outright from the knowledge and from him, and as I made my way down from the waterfront to Headquarters on foot, the fear I would not acknowledge transformed to anger no less forbidden. Could he not see that I had never wished to hurt him? Could he not see what I risked?

But that was a minefield, territory too dangerous to tread upon. I declared a plague on all such questions and increased my pace yet again.

Before I would have thought it possible, I looked up and saw the lights of the Starfleet Headquarters complex ahead. I had taken up temporary residence in the base housing facility. I made now for that structure, cutting across the open plaza of the administration building. I did not pause to watch the rhythmic fall of water into the great fountain, as I had on other nights; I wanted only to reach the private anonymity of my quarters as soon as possible.

Perhaps it was that same providence I do not believe in which brought me to the steps just as T'Sharen exited the lobby of the main building.

We saw each other in the same instant, came to a halt with what must have been nearly identical poses of surprise, T'Sharen at the top of the steps, myself at the bottom. Then, again as if choreographed, I went up the steps toward her; she turned and crossed the wide portico, came to meet me.

"Spock." She gave me a bemused look. "It seems your timing is impeccable, as always."

"T'Sharen." I struggled to bring my thoughts back to the present, to this unexpected development. "I am pleased to see you." I was. At least, I knew I would have been, had I not been quite so surprised. Belatedly, I offered her my paired fingers in greeting.

"Surprised, you mean," she said knowingly, returning the gesture with some irony. "You did not know I was only twelve hours distant."

She was tightly self-contained; I felt little in the brief contact of her fingers on mine, save a nebulous, nonspecific tension. "No," I said, withdrawing from the mildly disturbing touch. "You received my message, then?"

"I received it." She took a small step backward. "It is of that message that I wish to speak."

I waited. I could not quite shake the impression that this entire evening had taken place a step away from dream. Speaking to her here, on the deserted, lamplit steps of Starfleet Headquarters, I found it difficult to accept the reality of her.

When I did not speak, her eyes darkened. "Have you nothing to say?"

The sharpness of her tone perplexed me. "I thought I had been quite clear."

"Your news was unexpected, my husband."

I was genuinely taken aback. "In what respect?"

"You have never expressed a desire to command." Her storm- colored gaze was on mine again, her eyes mirrors, reflecting the night sky. That look struck me as dangerous, made me exceedingly uncomfortable. "In fact, quite the contrary."

"T'Sharen, what is it that you wish to say to me?"

Her eyes lowered. "I did not realize you had developed an interest in teaching. Why now, Spock?"

I took a step toward her, trying to read her. "Have I committed some offense against thee?"

But she turned away from me. Her posture was calm, but there was a tension in the set of her jaw. "No." This said quietly, the tension added in her voice. "But I thought that you were... I believed that you would be returning to Vulcan, when your mission ended."

I hesitated, dismayed. Had I ever given such an indication? If I had, I could not remember it. "We never spoke of it."

She turned back to me, intent. "No, you are correct. We never did. But I thought that surely--" She broke off.

"What, Shara?"

Her eyes grew darker still, nearly black in their intensity. "I thought that you would realize how much you are needed."

I understood then, or thought I did. We had successfully crossed the neutral zone and returned; her lifetime's hope achieved without incident. I hastened to reassure her. "You know that I will answer any summons that you send to me. I shall not fail you, T'Sharen, nor the seheikk'he."

She looked at me for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not she could believe me. But instead of answering she turned again and took two steps away from me. Her back was to me as she said, "There is the child, also. I had hoped..."

"Saavik is not a child any longer, Shara. She is sixteen now. Her home is on Helena--we have discussed this."

In the first year of our marriage we had repeatedly tried to find some solution, some way to bring Saavik to Vulcan, to make her our own. And each time we had come to the reluctant conclusion that our respective obligations precluded it, that for Saavik's own sake we must let her go. T'Sharen was well aware, as I was, that we had lost any such chance we might once have had. Why would she even broach the subject again?

I had to strain to hear her answer.

"I thought perhaps things might be different, if you returned."

I sighed, suddenly at the end of my endurance. "My wife, please speak plainly. I have had enough of omissions and half- truths for one evening. Can we not have honesty between us?"

She turned on me then, and her eyes showed me more honesty than I cared to see. "Half-truths? And what is yours, Spock? That Starfleet Academy cannot survive without your leadership? Because if it is honesty you wish, then by all means, let us understand the truth."

I was so startled I could only stare.

"Do you not see?" Her voice had dropped to something hardly more than a whisper. "Once again you have put his needs above your own, above all else in your life. How many lifetimes can you give one man? When will it be enough?"

I spoke before I could consider my words. "My life is my own to give."

She recoiled as if I had struck her, her eyes widening slightly. "Is that your answer?"

"What is your question?"

Her head lifted. "Will you return to Vulcan with me?"

The unreality of the conversation swept over me again, more powerfully than before. It struck me for the first time how swiftly five years had passed, how much this woman I had married remained unknown to me. She deserved better than what I had given her; she deserved more than what she asked of me. But I could not give her even that.

At last, I said, "Shara--I cannot."

She looked away. "Because he will not allow it."

"Because I cannot leave him now," I corrected, as gently as I could. "And I will not."

She said nothing.

"I am sorry, T'Sharen."

Still she did not speak, or turn.

I tried to make her understand. "You knew that I was a Starfleet officer when you married me. Nothing has changed."

At last she turned her great dark eyes to mine, and what I read there was a vast and distant sadness. "No," she said softly. "Nothing has."

She never asked me to consider leaving Starfleet again.

* * *

I believe that I could sleep, now. It has been days, and I am weary past enduring. Perhaps I could sleep for a few hours without dreaming.

The house is quiet, still. Somewhere outside I can hear a le matya's cries.

The others must have retired for the evening. Saavik is heavy with child, and the journey from Earth surely taxed her. As for T'Sharen... perhaps she has decided to allow me space to come to her of my own choosing. She does not push; she never has. That night in San Francisco was the only time, save one, that she ever asked anything of me I could not give.

I wonder if she is sleeping, up there in her rooms above the garden. I wonder if she lies awake, thinking. If she ever thinks of that night--and if so, if she has forgiven me.

In twenty-five years of marriage we have spent barely two of them in one another's company, much of that on ch'Rihan or in transit, across the neutral zone and back. But save for that one occasion, she has never expressed any discontent, has never said to me that she wished for anything more than what I could offer. She seemed to accept the constraints that circumstance and prior obligations placed upon our marriage, and I never questioned her acceptance. I simply never thought of wanting more.

It occurs to me, now, for the first time, that others might find our arrangement somewhat unorthodox. I can see that it might be difficult to understand. The connection we share has always been a nebulous one, difficult to define--but it has survived long separations and diverging life-paths and even the fal tor pan, and never has she expressed any desire to be released from any promise she ever made to me.

It occurs to me, however, that I have never asked her outright.

That night on Earth was the closest I ever came--and what did she say? 'I thought that you would realize how much you are needed.' And I made my own assumptions about what that meant.

. . .

Assumptions... yes, of course. I should have realized.

A year ago, Jim came to Vulcan unexpectedly. When pushed, he admitted knowing something of the dei'rah's purpose on ch'Rihan, admitted that he had come to try to convince me not to cross the neutral zone again. I have wondered how he gained that knowledge, after I had labored for so many years to keep it from him. I have wondered how much he knew. My reluctant assumption--the only conclusion I could make--was that perhaps Saavik had told him something of the truth.

I had not intended her to know. If it had been up to me she never would have, for I would not risk her life, too. But T'Sharen maintained--correctly, I suppose--that if anyone deserved to know the truth of what the dei'rah attempted, it was Saavik. And so, when our little cat turned eighteen, Shara told her.

As it turned out, I need not have worried. Saavik did not wish to accompany us to ch'Rihan--in fact, she thought we were quite mad even to consider such a thing. "You attempt to make peace with a wounded le matya," she said to me once, her eyes much older than her face. "Can you not see that? Does the b'toa seek unification with its natural enemy? No. For it knows the inevitable outcome of such folly." In all the years since she has never changed her position. Speaking of the dei'rah, of the seheikk'he, will still bring a darkness to her eyes, will still make her mouth tighten in disapproval.

I have always assumed it was Saavik who told him. But now I realize--he must have formed some suspicion that night when he followed me, and overheard a conversation not meant for his ears. He must have approached Saavik with those suspicions at some point; perhaps he allowed her to believe I had confided in him. Though I cannot believe he would have lied outright, he was not above strategic omission-- particularly not if he believed I was in danger. And Saavik would have found in him a sympathetic listener.

How many times did I lie to him with my silence, with my evasions, when all the while he knew, and said nothing? How many times did he nod, accept my lies at face value?

How many times did he lie to me with his own acceptance, pretending to believe me?

I do not think I shall ever know, precisely. The stardate of the next file indicates a gap of some eight years in the recording. Though he retained active duty status, he did not command a ship in all that time; if he kept a log at all, it was a private one, not subject to the scrutiny of Starfleet Command. As for what he thought and felt in those years, I can only speculate.

And there is that double edge again, for I can hear him say the words as if it were a day, a week, and not seventeen years in the past. I can see him saying them, reading them from the book I gave him, on that long ago anniversary of his birth.

I cannot say I meant anything by that gift, beyond perhaps a wish to make him smile--but even a Vulcan must admit a certain serendipity inherent in the choice of text.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

* * *

It seems I was mistaken, when I said that I might sleep without dreaming.

. . .

We sit at dinner, surrounded by strangers speaking a language I do not know. Above the sound of their indecipherable exchanges, I can hear the distant surge and crash of the ocean. He is speaking to me, also, but I cannot hear him over the sound of the waves. He will not look at me.

I say his name, and say it again, trying to make him understand. Then I see him lift the glass he holds, preparing to drink from it.

It is death. How I know this, I cannot explain. The liquid within is dark and thick and the color of human blood. He brings it to his lips, not looking at it. No! I cry. He does not hear. I try to reach out, try to stop him with my hands, but time for me flows like plasma in a cooling engine, and though I move I know I will be too late. T'hy'la, no!

And in the instant before the glass touches his lips, he looks at me, sees me reaching for him with my slow, ineffectual grasp.

He laughs, and the hand that holds the glass stops short of his mouth, and I read the words on his lips. Did I scare you? he laughs. Is that it?

I cannot answer, for my heart threatens to implode from fear. I try desperately to snatch the glass from his fingers, to knock it to the ground, but I move with a dragging, viscous helplessness, and cannot reach him. When I do not answer him, he laughs once more, this time with his eyes over the rim of the glass.

And drinks.

. . .

I do not believe I shall attempt to sleep again.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate...

. . .

Captain's Personal...

Oh damn, damn, I can't--

. . .

Captain's Personal Log, supplemental.

Mister Scott assures me that the Enterprise will withstand the journey home, as long as I don't ask for better than warp two. He reports... he reports the radiation levels in Engineering are now sufficiently reduced to permit crews to begin repairs.

Casualties from Khan's attack on the Enterprise were...

. . .

Casualties are...

. . .

I can't do this. I can't do this. And you know what? I don't know why the hell I'm even trying. It doesn't make any goddamned difference! It doesn't matter how good I am at pretending, it won't change anything. So the hell with it.

. . .

The hell with it...

. . .

. . .

. . .

"Jim?"

"Spock?"

"No...it's me. McCoy."

. . .

"...I'm sorry."

"Me, too. ...Why're all the lights off in here?"

"Leave them off!"

. . .

"Get lost, Bones. I'm sorry. I can't--I can't talk to you right now."

"Ah, Jim, it's all right. It's just me. You don't have to play the starship captain tonight."

"Pardon me, Doctor, but you don't know what the hell you're talking about. I'm fine, there's not a damned thing wrong with me. Now do me a favor and--and get out of here."

. . .

"You left your log recorder on."

"Damn the log recorder!"

"Hey--"

"Get your hands off of me."

"Jim."

"What?!?"

"It's okay. I'm here. I'm here."

. . .

. . .

"Ah, shit, Bones."

"I know. I know. Shh..."

[stop]

[advance playback]

I cannot listen to any more of that.

It is impossible. No matter that I vowed to myself that I would bear all that is mine to bear--I cannot listen to that. It is simply, flatly, unequivocally impossible.

Doctor, you chose your weapons well. If you wanted me to admit there are some things I cannot bear, I admit it. If you wanted me to know the shape of human grief, I know it. If it was your objective to awaken in me pain beyond enduring, then you have won. I concede the field.

[cue next file]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 8201.3:

With most of our battle damage repaired, we are almost home. Yet I feel...uneasy, and I wonder why. Perhaps it is the erratic behavior of ship's surgeon Leonard McCoy, or the emptiness of the vessel. Most of our trainee crew have been reassigned. Lieutenant Saavik and my son David are exploring a new world. The Enterprise feels like a house with all the children gone.

No... more empty even than that. The news of Spock's tube has shaken me. It seems that I have left the noblest part of myself back there, on that newborn planet."

[stop]

Curious. For the first time, this feels like a violation.

It seems an injustice, that I should be permitted to know what he would say, what he would feel, believing me dead. What difference it can make now, I do not know. I only know that, hearing the heavy grief and loss in his voice, I find myself wishing, illogically, that I might reassure him, reach out to him across the years, tell him that it will not be forever, that I will come back to him. I wish that I might tell him I am sorry, for what my choices cost him.

A captain's personal logs are a part of his certified record of service, just as his official logs are. Jim would have known when he made these recordings that the files might one day be accessed by any number of individuals. Though such logs are not generally available for casual perusal, there is nothing implicitly private about them.

Nevertheless, the impression persists. I am a voyeur at my own death.

[resume playback]

"Personal Log, James T. Kirk:

. . .

No stardate. No title. For what I am contemplating will surely end my right to use the rank, any rank.

I'm on the high side of fifty now. I've been a Starfleet officer more than half my life. I've been decorated for my commitment to the Federation more times than I've counted. And now, at this late date, I'm seriously considering mutiny and treason, both.

I've got nothing left to lose.

Six hours and more since Sarek left. An hour ago Harry Morrow closed the door on my last hope of doing this above board. Goddamn the man, he actually told me to enjoy me leave! I tell him that a man who's been my Chief Medical Officer for twenty years may die if I don't get him back to Genesis, that another man's very soul hangs in the balance--and he tells me to forget about that and enjoy my leave??

If only I could do this without bringing down the best officers a captain could ask for. If only I thought I had a chance in hell of doing this alone...

I can't condemn them for their loyalty to me, to McCoy. To Spock. And Scotty's right, I need them--can't do it without them.

I wish Spock were here. He could find me an answer. Maybe if we succeed, if we're not too late--but I can't think about that right now. That's a thought a man in my position can't afford to have. If there ever was a time for clear thinking, this is it.

There's work to be done."

[continue playback]

"Personal Log. Time? Late. Can't read the chronometers, because they're in Klingon, like everything else around here.

Can't sleep. Too wired. We're still seven hours from Vulcan, and I think I'm going to lose it long before we make orbit. Saavik knows; I saw her looking at me on the bridge. I must look like hell. My own officers won't look at me. I guess I know what they're seeing, and I can't blame them for worrying. If this doesn't work, I'm... I'm...

It's going to work. It has to work.

God... Saavik. She knows what happened to David. To my son. She saw it. Tried to stop it. Have to remember to tell her it wasn't her fault.

Did she love him? I don't know. I don't know how to tell what a Vulcan feels, not really. Even after all these years, I don't know. I thought I did, once.

Came down to what passes for a sickbay on this ship, because I couldn't take all that careful, matter-of-fact normality on the bridge. I found them together.

I beat the doctor at his own game. He probably thought I wasn't paying attention, all those times when I was hurt and didn't have the sense to lie down. I snitched a hypo from his medikit and gave him a half-dose of the same stuff he's hit me with more than once. It worked; he was out cold in about ten seconds flat, grumbling all the way down. He's sleeping quietly now.

And the other...the other...

Oh, gods, I don't even know what to call him. He looks like Spock. His hands feel like Spock's. But a few minutes ago I put them on my face, put my hands on his, and nothing happened. Nothing--

What did I expect to happen, damnit? Sarek told me how it would be. I knew. There's hope--I keep telling myself there's hope. Doesn't mean anything that I can't...can't feel him. I'm not a telepath; I never could. It's been so long since he touched me like that, I don't even know if I would recognize the feeling anyway.

He looks like he's in bad shape. Unconscious. His pulse is just a whisper against my fingertips. But there's hope. It just means Sarek was right, when he said the mind and the body are parts of a whole. And if he was right about that, then maybe he was right about the rest of it. He said there was a chance.

Bones doesn't look much better. The ambassador said it was like an allergic reaction; that McCoy's mind just couldn't accept what Spock gave him. I wish more than anything that I could have spared him this. He's had it roughest of all of us.

Sarek assumed it would have been me. Just assumed. I wanted to tell him that Spock and I aren't... that we haven't melded in years. Wanted to tell him that I tried, I tried so hard to touch his son, to get to him. The words wouldn't come. The man must have seen it in my mind.

He didn't condemn me; not out loud, at least. But his eyes said, if only it could have been you, instead of McCoy. He didn't have to tell me what my failure could end up costing my friends.

Damn him, anyway. It should have been me!

. . .

Now where did that come from, I wonder? Damn, I'm beginning to lose it.

. . .

Bones says he feels like he's aged a century in the past two months--which is pretty much how I feel. But as tired as I am, as many days as it's been, I still can't sleep. Doesn't matter that I'm starting to come apart around the edges. Sulu and Chekov can certainly pilot the damn ship to Vulcan without my help; I'm staying here. Someone has to watch over them."

[continue playback]

"Personal Log... SahaiKahr, fourteen hundred hours:

The waiting is killing me. I feel like all I've done, for as long as I can remember, is wait.

It's been eight days. Eight days, five hours, and about... ten minutes, to be exact. McCoy seems recovered, but withdrawn. I tried to talk to him today, about--about what happened up there, on the mountain.

He seemed glad to see me, but not entirely there, in a way I couldn't define. When I asked him about Spock, about his opinion of what had happened, he said, 'Who can say, Admiral? The only absolute is death. Spock lives. It remains to be seen how many layers deep his return to life may reach.'

I have to admit, I didn't much like that answer. It didn't sound like Bones... and it didn't really sound like Spock, either. We talked for a little while about nothing in particular, and then he grew tired. Fell asleep in his chair while I was talking to him, like an old man. Which he's not.

They said he would need time to adjust, to... how did they put it? 'Acclimate himself to his isolated existence.' Seems to me the last thing he needs is to be left alone, but what do I know? I'm on the outside looking in, and the windows are pretty damn murky.

I want to see Spock. I want to see Spock so badly that I don't know what to do with myself. Not knowing is driving me crazy. Maybe literally.

Amanda's on the mountain. She's an adept, so I guess she's been called for some purpose no one's seen fit to explain to me. Sarek's gone off to Earth, I think to try and get me and the others off the hook, though he didn't say so.

I don't know where the hell T'Sharen is. No one will talk about her. I've been unable to reach her, or get anyone to tell me where she's gone--just as it's been since the first time I tried to call her, on the trip home from Genesis. I tried to ask Sarek before he left. He gave me his most forbidding 'none of your business' look, and wouldn't tell me a thing. She's Spock's wife, for heaven's sake. I can't believe they won't let me at least talk to her.

The only Vulcan here who seems to make any sense is Saavik, and they won't tell her anything, either.

We've been spending a lot of time together. The girl's alone... maybe as alone as I am. She told me two days ago what she's been doing down in ShiKahr all week; she's pregnant. With my... with my son's child.

I cried a little when she told me. After, when she had gone. It's the first time I've been able to since he--

. . .

I told her last night that it wasn't her fault. That I didn't blame her for what happened to David. I don't think she was ready to hear that... she pulled a Spock on me, and managed to avoid the topic. Hard to believe she grew up on Helena, and not on Vulcan, the way she can control like that.

But I know now that she loved my son. And that she loves Spock, too, for all that control that's so much like his.

What do you know? Sometimes friends can be discovered in the most unexpected places..."

[stop]

My memories of those weeks are still distorted, incomplete. Time was a fluid, inconstant thing for me then, and when I think of those days what I recall is the desert, and the sky, and I remember what it is to be wholly alone. For a time I could not measure I existed as an empty vessel, learning once again to live, to inhabit my skin.

When I began to know myself again, I approached the woman I had come to know as my mother and asked her, "How did I come to this place?"

And she grew serious, and said, "You came to me out of the valley of the shadow of death, my son, carried on the shoulders of those who hold you dear in their hearts."

That is my first true memory, after the darkness.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Log, stardate 8297.7:

The former officers of the Enterprise agreed tonight to return to Earth, to face charges as specified by Admiral Cartwright of Starfleet and the indictment of the Federation Council. The H.M.S. Bounty, as we have christened our salvaged vessel, will be ready to fly in four days; at that time, my officers and I will depart Vulcan.

Note, mark this date: resumption of the official log of Admiral, acting Captain, James T. Kirk.

. . .

Captain's Personal Log, supplemental:

T'Sharen has come home. I saw her tonight.

We took the vote at sunset, and I left Scott, Uhura and Sulu at repair stations. McCoy and Chekov I sent to ShiKahr to fulfill final requisitions.

And then I went up the mountain on foot.

It's been almost three months. Every effort I've made to see Spock has met with evasions or flat refusal. Bones has seen him any number of times; but always when T'Lar is there, and only for the facilitating sessions. When I question him about the sessions--about Spock--his answers are exasperatingly vague. At first I thought he was trying to protect me from something. Now, I'm not so sure.

The truth is, McCoy worries me. He's just not himself... hasn't been, since this happened. And as if he doesn't have enough to deal with, I'm afraid I've lost my patience more than once in the last three months. Usually with him on the receiving end. I just want so badly to be there, for both of them.

It should have been me. I guess that's what it really boils down to; it should have been me.

. . .

I've never been good at being on the outside, sitting and waiting, feeling like there isn't a damn thing I can do. Well, tonight I decided I'd had enough. I put everyone to work on the ship, as usual; then I set off to find Spock, and the Vulcan elders be damned.

I took Saavik with me. To be more accurate, she spotted me from the house and met me on the path. She didn't say a word, just stood there, waiting for me to lead the way up. I meant to refuse her. But when it came right down to it, I couldn't tell her no. She's been there with me from the beginning. And besides, I figured I could use the moral support, if nothing else. I just nodded once and kept going, hearing her fall into step behind me.

When we got to the top of the ridge, she didn't remark on the fact that I was gasping for breath from the climb--just produced a handkerchief from a pocket somewhere and handed it to me. It was such a Spock thing to do that I thought for a second I was going to embarrass myself in front of her. I didn't, thank heavens. I just turned and marched right through the gate, and she came right behind me.

We got as far as the mezzanine before an adept stopped us. I told the woman--very reasonably, I thought--that I was sorry for the intrusion, but that I would like to see Spock; that if she wanted to stop me, she would have to do so by force. Of course, we both knew that she might try to do just that. I have to admit I was pretty glad of the Vulcan cavalry standing at my shoulder; it's a feeling I've missed for far too long.

But the woman surprised me. She just looked at me, at both of us, for what seemed like a full minute. Then she motioned for us to follow her down to the living quarters.

It flattened me, that it had been so easy. I don't know if they would have let me see him sooner, if I'd forced the issue. I was so grateful that she was taking me to Spock that I didn't let myself think about that.

We followed her for almost ten minutes. Finally she stopped in front of a closed door, gave me what felt like a 'you asked for it' look, and left us standing there in the corridor. I looked at Saavik, but she just looked back at me like, 'What are you waiting for?' So, I knocked.

They've kept him so closeted up on that mountain, that in the thirteen weeks we've been here I've seen him face to face a grand total of three times. Once the morning after the fal tor pan, when he called me 'Jim,' and I let myself start to hope that I might get him back. Once out on the desert at dawn, I met him returning from some sort of pilgrimage... but he was strange then, distant, as if he had been out on the Forge too long and had forgotten the power of speech.

And once I came upon him at the house, standing out on the balcony. He was looking down the slope toward the ship, watching Sulu work on the hull. I went and stood next to him, so grateful to be able to just be there with him that I didn't dare say anything that might make him go away. So we just stood there looking out for a good ten minutes. Finally I mustered the courage to speak to him, but just then Sarek showed up. I got the idea that he had something to say to Spock that didn't need a witness, and so I left them there together. When I came back a few minutes later, Spock was gone.

So tonight, when that door opened and I saw him there, I froze. I didn't know what to say, or do. He was so real, so alive, that I just stood there like a dumbstruck cadet. I realize now that I'd been harboring... irrational fears. That I'd been afraid to let myself believe. But tonight I saw him, searched his eyes in the candlelight from the wall sconce, and I saw that he was Spock. Maybe not quite the same--but Spock, nonetheless.

He just said, "You wished to see me, Admiral?" As if I'd just happened to stop by. As if it hadn't been months for us. And so help me, I wanted to just grab him and hold on to him, tell him how worried I'd been. Beg him to tell me what the future holds for us. Tell him I was leaving and beg him to come with me. Thank Vulcan deities Saavik was there, or I don't know what I might have done.

Maybe he saw that I was about to indulge in one hell of an emotional display right there in the hallway, because he stepped back out of the doorway, invited us in.

And that's when I saw her. T'Sharen.

She was just standing there, cool as you please. I was so surprised that I caught myself with my mouth hanging open. The lieutenant was obviously as stunned as I was; she took a step past me, then froze, looking from one of them to the other.

T'Sharen gave me a look I couldn't read, as Vulcan as they come--but before she could say anything, Saavik spoke, called her by a name I didn't recognize. "S'harien! Where have you been?" she says.

I was glad she'd been the one to say it. I might have been somewhat less... tactful. But T'Sharen just exchanged a long look with Spock and didn't answer.

Then Saavik's face changed, and she seemed to understand. All of a sudden I got the feeling I was the only person in that room without a clue about what was going on. Saavik takes another step toward T'Sharen, and says, "You went alone?"

The woman cuts her off, like she's said too much, "Yes, Saavikam. I came as swiftly as I could." Then she turns to me. "Admiral, I... I cannot find words to thank you." She didn't quite look at me when she said this, and it looked like it was hard for her to say it. "I regret the loss of your son. You have given me a gift I can never repay."

I think I hated her then. It hit me all at once, no warning--I was suddenly so angry I couldn't see straight. And I never saw it coming.

How dare she? How dare she think for a moment that I had done it--any of it--for her? How dare she show up here after three months and pretend that she had any right to be in that room with him?

"I don't have anything to say to that," I snapped before I could stop myself. "I don't know where you've been for the past three months, and frankly, I don't care." I looked at Spock, then, and saw that my outburst had shocked him. He had gone very still. He was wearing that nonexpression of disapproval he gets when I've made an ass of myself, and he wouldn't quite meet my eyes.

I tried to tone it down, but I don't think I was too successful; it'd been stewing too long. "If you want to thank me for doing what I had to do, that's your prerogative. I just came to tell Spock that we're returning to Earth tomorrow morning, first thing. I wanted to say--goodbye."

It wasn't really what I'd come to say at all. But Spock was looking more uncomfortable every second, and I couldn't very well say the things I really wanted to say, not then, not in front of her. I suddenly had to get out of there. I met his eyes, wouldn't let him avoid it. "I'll be down at the house until oh- seven-hundred. We lift off at eight hundred hours. If you can... Spock, if you can, I'd like to talk to you before we go."

I didn't wait for him to answer. I'd already embarrassed us all enough. I gave Saavik what I hope came across as an apologetic look, and got out of there.

I'm sitting now on the balcony at the back of the house. T'Kuht is very bright tonight, and in the light she casts I can see the track which runs down from the sanctuary. It twists around Amanda's walled garden, eventually passing to a switchback that leads off to the east. That direction is the desert, and the ceremonial ground of Sarek's family.

McCoy and Uhura and Scott went to bed hours ago; it's almost dawn. Sulu's probably still working on the Bounty... maybe Chekov's with him. I can't see the ship from here, because I've turned my chair so I can look up the trail, north and west. I can see the silhouette of the Sentinel, black against the red- dark sky.

He's not coming. I didn't really think he would, not after the little scene I made him endure tonight. But in spite of the fact that I've been trying hard not to... I'd hoped.

He's not coming. Face it, Kirk, you blew it. The one chance you had to reach him, to make him remember how it used to be, and you blew it. All because you acted like a--

Admit it. You acted like a jealous child.

. . .

You couldn't take it, could you, that she could show up after three months and act as if she had all the right in the world to be there? You couldn't take it that you were the outsider in that room. That's the way it's always been with him. Why the hell haven't you gotten used to it by now?

There's someone coming down the trail toward the house. I can't see who it is. Damn, what did I do with those spectacles? Oh, there--

Well, I'll be damned. Maybe literally.

. . .

It's T'Sharen."

[stop]

Jealousy?

There seemed to be no reason for his anger that night. It came up as suddenly as a wind chimera on the Forge. I felt it in that tiny chamber like a natural force, a tempest of storm captured in a vial, devouring itself and everything in its path. I had tried to understand its cause. But jealousy? On my behalf?

I would not have thought him capable of it.

Only days before, the elders had at last declared the fal tor pan a success. That very morning I had completed the rigorous memory testing to T'Lar's satisfaction, and thus gained my freedom. I had reached a new awareness of the flow of events around me, of my place in them, and I found myself impatient to be free of Seleya and its ritual pedantry.

I had already spoken to my mother of my intention to accompany my crewmates to Earth, to face the inquest. It had been my intention to seek Jim out at sunset, when he and the others would be at the repair site. But that afternoon a ship arrived, a trader of Andorian origin, bringing raw iron and other minerals, as well as one Vulcan passenger. My wife.

I received word of her arrival only minutes before the ship was to dock. Jim and the others were still in the middle of their sleep cycle; as humans on my desert homeworld they had adapted to the heat by sleeping during the day and working in the evening hours. I drove my mother's aircar to the spaceport, arriving with moments to spare.

I did not understand then this anger Jim displayed, this hostility toward Shara, when always before he had shown only pleasant civility and respect. I did not realize that his anger was for my sake, for the betrayal he perceived in my wife's absence during those months. What he did not know, what I did not ever tell him, was that she did not come because she could not.

In the weeks before that fateful training cruise, I received a communique from Shara. For the first time in years, the dei'rah had received a message from the neutral zone. The same three-word message we had answered years before, when we had found Saavik, and Hellguard. There was not time for me to reach Vulcan; they would go without me. I bid her farewell, not without some considerable trepidation.

I can only imagine what it must have been like for her. I tried, in those last minutes, to reach her, to protect her from the shock of separation. I cannot be certain if I was at all successful. The breaking of a lifebond is... a deeply personal thing. In some cases, one bonded thus may choose to follow the spouse in death. I cannot know with any certainty what Shara felt, how much she knew; I cannot know what she experienced, when I made my choice and entered that reactor chamber.

She would not speak of it.

A month passed before my comrades brought me to Vulcan. Another week for the coded signal to reach Shara's vessel. Five weeks she believed me dead. And she would not ever speak of it.

When she received the coded signal informing her that I was on Vulcan, alive, she and the others had already reached their destination, were already embroiled in their attempt to rescue survivors of another Rihannsu prison camp. When all who could be saved had been, Shara and the others turned for home.

It was then that the Tal Shiar struck.

Was it retribution for our covert visits to the seheikk'he? Or was it only viciousness? We never knew for certain. Perhaps the Tal Shiar had somehow learned of a Vulcan presence on ch'Rihan, and chose to strike where they could. Perhaps they only wished to shed Vulcan blood. In any case, they broke the pattern of four decades and attacked the refugee ship as it made for the neutral zone, and only the speed of the dei'rah ship saved them. They escaped across the zone with few casualties.

Three weeks for the dei'rah'sen to repair the damaged life support and structural systems. Three more days of system failures to conclude that the damage was too extensive to sustain them to Vulcan. A week out of the way to Andor, and then another four days for Shara to catch a freighter bound for 40 Eridani. Six weeks at warp one-point-five from Andor to Vulcan.

And so it was that T'Sharen did not reach me until the evening before my comrades were to depart.

When I saw her disembark from the Andorian ship, I almost did not know her. It was as if I saw her for the first time. For a moment this disturbed me, profoundly. We stood there in the middle of the busy terminal, frozen some meters apart, and I saw the same disconcerted loss mirrored in her eyes.

Then I understood; we were no longer linked.

"This is to be expected," T'Lar said, as we faced her together in her sparsely appointed antechamber. "The pathways have been severed, and must be reconstructed. We will begin tomorrow."

"No," I said. "For I am leaving in the morning with Admiral Kirk and his party." I could not look at T'Sharen. "It will have to wait."

Shara said nothing. When at last I was able to look at her, I caught only a glimpse of her white face before she turned and stalked out of the chamber without a word.

To me, T'Lar displayed only sharp indifference. I bowed my head slightly. "I offer my apologies, Master. For my wife's behavior, and for my own disobedience. I have no choice in this matter."

She nodded to me, once, and turned away. "You may go."

I hurried after T'Sharen, catching her at the end of the open arcade. The sun had set; T'Kuht was rising, unusually bright. "My wife," I said, "I would speak with thee."

She stopped, turned on me. "Your wife. In name only?"

"Shara--"

"Is it so unimportant to you?"

I tried to reach out to her. "You know it is not. But I must go to Earth."

She avoided my touch. Her eyes burned me. "Do you have any concept of what it has been like for me? Do you know how long I have waited?"

I became aware that we were standing in plain view. "Let us continue this in the privacy of my quarters."

Her eyes flashed darkly. "By all means."

I led the way in silence, struggling with the things I wanted to say to her. This reunion had been nothing like I had expected. She was a stranger; I did not know how to reach her, make her understand.

In the close quarters of my room, she turned her back to me and stood at the narrow window. "Go ahead, Spock," she said. "Tell me of your obligations. Tell me of debts owed."

"Shara... surely you are aware of what they have done for me. What they have sacrificed."

She spun around then, her dark hair flying. "Of course I am! No one knows better than I!"

"Then--"

But she was not listening. "Oh yes, Spock. I know what I may thank them for. Be assured, I know who to thank for taking my husband from me. But how am I to trust you again?"

Her unmitigated bitterness shocked me. I struggled for some rational response. "Have I ever given you cause to doubt me?"

"You made your choices," she said coldly. "And now you choose again, as you always have."

"You must know I will return as soon as I can."

Her mouth tightened. "Is that supposed to make any difference?"

I was at a loss. "T'Sharen... you ask of me something I cannot give."

The blood drained out of her face. Her eyes went very wide. "And what would you not give... for them? For him?"

I had walked into that face on, had not seen it coming. Of course, we both knew the answer. Both knew what I would give, what I had already given. That was the difficulty.

I am ashamed to say I could not answer her.

She gave me a look I could not read. Then she took one step toward me, another. And suddenly her strained control faltered, and I saw the haunted darkness in her, very near the surface. "Spock..." She made a small gesture with her hands, as if pleading with me. "Do you not understand? I did not think I would ever see you again."

I reached out. "I am sorry that I--"

But she drew away from me, sharply, eyes flashing. "That is a lie. You would do it again, for less."

"Would you have had me do nothing?"

"Yes!" But her gaze faltered.

"Shara," I said gently, "you must know that I acted out of logic. If I had not, I would have died anyway, and the ship with me. There would have been no one to come after me."

"The good of the many," she whispered, and I knew then that she had watched the Enterprise flight recording.

"Yes," I said, with difficulty.

"It has always been so, for us. I do not know why I thought this would be any different." She was silent for a moment, and I could see weary resignation forming in her face. She drew a breath. Looked up at me. "Very well. Do as you must. Only--do not expect me to be here when you return."

I took a step toward her, dismayed. "Shara?"

She shook her head, and there was irony in the gesture. "Fear not, Spock. I shall not break the traditions of the thousand years. I shall remain your wife."

My voice was not entirely controlled. "Then what are you saying?"

Her eyes went dark, like thunderclouds on Earth. "Go, if you must. If you would go now, after all that I have borne--so be it. I cannot choose for you." She lifted her head, as if it was a kind of victory to do so. "But I choose for myself. I joined with you once, on the sands of koon ut kalifee, and I felt that bond broken when you died. I will not suffer that again, Spock. For if you would choose once, then you will always choose thus--and I could not bear it again!" She bit the words off fiercely, and the darkness of what she had suffered haunted her eyes. "I will not bear it again."

There was a finality in that with brooked no argument--and I could not find words in any case.

She turned away, toward the window once more. Stood gazing out at the night. "Do not regret, Spock. I vowed long ago that I would not ask more than you could freely give." Her voice dropped to a murmur, barely audible, and she glanced at me sidelong over her shoulder. "It is unfortunate that not all who would make claims upon you would promise the same."

"You do not--" I began, but just then there was a knock at the door. I moved to answer it, feeling the weight of her gaze on me as I did so.

To my surprise, I found my captain standing in the corridor, my little cat posted staunchly at his right shoulder.

* * *

Her choice to refuse the bonding was a grief to me, but it could not change what I had to do. We had only that one night. In the morning I followed the narrow track down to the valley floor, where I joined my comrades and departed for Earth.

Our marriage has endured sixteen years thus, and we have never again spoken of the bond, or of my death, in all those years. We have melded when biological necessity demanded it. Outside of my Time, I have not touched her thoughts. We have achieved a kind of harmony, and that has had to be enough.

I suppose there is a... security in knowing the limits of a thing; there is no risk where there is no hope of change. We live comfortably together, and she has been a comfort. If I allowed it, she would comfort me now, even in this.

I cannot. I forfeited the right to such solace from her the day I let her walk out of that room and did nothing to stop her.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, supplemental:

Well, that was fun. Don't pull any punches my dear, tell me what you really think.

She did that all right.

. . .

I went down and met her at the gate. I didn't want to risk anyone hearing what she might have to say to me. Turned out to be a good move on my part.

I guess I've always known that whatever time I had with Spock was a gift. I've never been what he needed, not really. Sometimes I've wondered why he stays with me, when she is everything I can't be for him; I've had the thought, more than once, that maybe it's because I need him more than she does.

After the way I talked to her at the sanctuary, I couldn't really blame her for giving me back some of my own medicine. I was expecting something like that... a demand for an explanation, maybe. I knew I ought to feel repentant. But all I could think was, after all that's happened, after all we've lost to get Spock back, he's out of our reach. That in the end, it doesn't matter how badly I need him. We're on Vulcan now, and all the rights are hers.

Not that she gave me a chance to apologize anyway, even if I'd been planning to. She met me at the gate and the first words out of her mouth were, "So, now we know the answer." Her eyes glittered in the lamplight.

I shook my head impatiently. I'd had enough of Vulcan obscurity to last me a lifetime. "I don't even know the question."

She looked me right in the eye, as if defying me to deny it. "Is there nothing he wouldn't do for you?"

It caught me off guard, and I know she saw that it did. That's not fair, I wanted to say. But what came out was, "There's nothing I wouldn't do for him." And then, before I could stop myself, "Can you say the same?"

But if she reacted to that one iota, I couldn't see it. She just looked at me as if there was nothing I could say, nothing I could do that would make the smallest difference to her.

"Admiral," she said presently, "I came to say two things to you."

I was embarrassed, then, and looked down at the ground. "I'm listening."

"I spoke genuinely," she said, "when I offered condolence for your loss. If I... if it seemed otherwise, know that I am not... unfeeling. I meant no presumption."

I could only nod. She'd read me so easily.

When she didn't say anything else, I made myself look at her. "And? You said two things."

For a few seconds she just stood there, gazing off down the slope, toward the Bounty. I had the thought, not for the first time, that though she's not what I'd call beautiful she's got one of those faces you just want to look at. That's what I was thinking when she turned back to me, gave me a look that punched me right in the gut.

Her voice was so low that I had to strain to hear her. "Do not ever think," she said, "that this makes us even. It does not. Nothing you have done, nothing you have lost, shall ever erase the fact that he was on that ship for one reason only." She lifted her head, shook her hair back. "You have taken my husband from me for the last time, James Kirk."

I was stunned silent. For a second, I thought that she would say more. But she turned abruptly on her heel and went out of the gate.

No! I wanted to cry after her. You're wrong--it was never like that!

But god help me, she wasn't wrong. Doesn't matter that Bones, Scotty, the others think I'm innocent. She knows the truth. Just like Carol did. Of course it's my fault.

How many husbands have I sent to their deaths, over the years? How many wives? How many children, and sisters, and brothers? Even my own son. My fault that I didn't force the issue with Carol years ago, make her let me in on David's life. Would he have insisted on going to the Genesis planet if I hadn't suggested he stay away? If he hadn't been so dead set on rebelling against me, his absentee father?

My fault that Khan got free, got his hands on Genesis. My fault that any of them were there at all. And Spock--

Oh, god, she wasn't wrong.

Not by a long shot.

. . .

Sun's coming up. Maybe an hour, maybe less, before we're supposed to start final checks for takeoff. Too late to go after her--and I don't know what I'd say if I did.

I'm sorry? I am, but if I'm to be honest, I have to admit I'd do all the same things again, if given the same choices.

I never meant for him to make sacrifices for me? A lie, and she'd know it. I've used every tactic I know to keep him at my side, over the years. When appealing to logic didn't work, I wasn't above bald-faced manipulation. I'd have done anything ...if it meant he'd stay with me.

I still would.

Nothing I can say to her that will make any difference. Nothing I can do, but accept that he's alive, try to make that be enough. Try to accept that the time for waiting and hoping is over, and that nothing's going to ever be the same.

All right, I suppose that's enough self-pity for one night. Time to go down to the ship and get to work.

No more waiting."

[stop]

That morning I rose near daybreak and began to prepare for the journey. As I did so, T'Sharen took her leave of me. She asked no promises of me, made no demands for my timely return.

"There will be time for us, my wife," I said to her. But she only stood in the doorway watching me.

I searched for words that would make a difference. "You will contact me, if... if I am needed?"

"If you are needed," was all she said.

I would have spoken again, but her eyes on mine made words unnecessary. Nothing that I could have said would have changed anything. I was going. When the silence grew too long, she left.

I never knew where she went that morning. She never mentioned it. Jim certainly never said anything to me about that early morning meeting in my mother's garden, or about what was said.

In the years which followed, I was to find that Jim's attitude toward T'Sharen had altered from a kind of wary respect to one of open distrust. T'Sharen's toward my captain bordered on outright resentment. I never understood what had changed, assumed that this was the inevitable fallout of the choices I had made. I suppose that was not so far from the truth. I soon learned to avoid speaking of one in the other's presence--and I avoided thinking too closely about the illogic of that. If my life had been divided before, the division was now complete.

When I appeared in the hatchway of the salvaged ship later that morning, Jim's eyes told me what his casual greeting did not. He had believed I would not come. He made an attempt to discourage me from boarding, which I saw through in a moment and ignored, and we set off for Earth.

* * *

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 9522.6:

I have never trusted Klingons, and I never will. I can never forgive them for the death of my boy.

It seems to me our mission to escort the chancellor of the Klingon High Council to a peace summit is problematic at best. Spock says this could be an historic occasion, and I'd like to believe him--but how on earth can history get past people like me?"

. . .

"Valeris... You could've knocked."

"We are almost at the rendezvous, sir. I thought you would want to know..."

"Right."

"Permission to speak freely, sir? It is an honor to serve with you."

"You piloted well out of spacedock, Lieutenant."

"I have always wanted to try that, sir."

. . .

"Was there something else, Valeris?"

. . .

"I only wished to say, Captain Spock was most... distressed... when he returned from Admiral Cartwright's briefing this evening. He--"

"He what? Did he say something to you?"

"I was at the transporter console. I asked him if the briefing had gone smoothly. And he said, 'Quite the contrary, Lieutenant. Indeed, in trying to help him, I may only have succeeded in driving him away from me, permanently.' Captain, I thought you should know."

. . .

"Thank you, Valeris. I'll... consider it."

"Very good, sir."

[stop]

This surprises me. I would not have thought her capable of such concerns, on the very eve of her treachery. True, she did not know then that the guillotine she had raised would fall on Jim's neck--but she did not hesitate to let him take the fall, when the opportunity presented itself. Me, she played for a fool. Why then should she have cared what my captain thought about me? Why then should she have risked exposure unnecessarily?

She is the truest enigma I have ever encountered.

* * *

Valeris was fourteen when T'Sharen found her in that Rihannsu camp. She, like Saavik, was a wild creature, half- starved and wholly vicious. Like Saavik, she was a force of raw intellect, waiting to be tamed.

Unlike Saavik, in the end her childhood conquered her.

T'Sharen brought Valeris to live with her after I left Vulcan on the Bounty. In the year after our difficult parting at the sanctuary, our only contact came through text messages, and those infrequent and impersonal. I did not know what to say to her. My letters were full of events and descriptions, and never did I mention the future.

Hers were full of Valeris. The girl had captured her interest entirely. T'Sharen took a sabbatical from her duties at the dei'rah, and stayed with Valeris on Vulcan, tutoring her in the ways of Surak. I knew that my wife had many regrets regarding Saavik, knew that she hoped not to make the same mistakes.

Perhaps it was the age difference. Saavik, at ten, was able in the end to overcome the horror of her upbringing; Valeris, at fourteen, had already seen too much. She tried, I believe. Certainly T'Sharen believed it. Saavik herself took an instant dislike to the girl; perhaps she instinctively saw something we did not. Perhaps I should have listened to my little cat.

If I felt anger, betrayal at Valeris' treachery--how much more deeply would it wound T'Sharen? It was the thought of Shara which filled me when I perceived at last the identity of the traitor. The thought of having to tell her.

The thought of what I would see in her eyes when I told her filled me with such bile that, for the first time in my life, I struck another being out of anger.

Worse. Oh, I did much worse than that.

Even now, two years later, I find it difficult to believe that I could have done such a thing. Say it--I raped her. I took her mind between my hands and wrenched from it what I wanted.

I still feel physically unwell when I think of it.

. . .

It was necessary, I told myself then. To save lives, I needed the information she would not freely give. I even told myself it was not my responsibility. In the days and weeks after, I told myself it was Jim who had ordered me to do that appalling thing. His fault. I tried to blame him and in his turn he willingly accepted the blame. I let him. I conveniently allowed myself to forget that James Kirk would accept the blame for every evil in the universe, if he could. I allowed myself to ignore the fact that he never ordered me to do what I did to her. And if he did not stop me... well, he trusted my control, if nothing else. He did not know my darkest truth; that I did it to save lives, yes, and because he asked me for a solution--but mostly, I did it for Shara's sake, and my own.

It was too much. My own betrayal still plagued me, though fourteen years had passed. We had come to an understanding, Shara and I. But everything I had done to try to make recompense to her over the years had not been enough. Had not changed the fact that when she most needed me, I had left her alone. And we both knew... if I had it to do again, I would choose the same.

I never really understood what passed between my wife and that enigmatic creature she brought to live with her. In the year of our separation, Shara turned to Valeris for something I could not give her. Valeris needed her. And in her turn, Shara gave to that wounded young woman more of herself than she had ever been able to give another being. Myself included.

It was simply intolerable, that Valeris should have betrayed her, too; and in the one fashion which would wound her most. T'Sharen is, above all, a woman of peace. She has made it her life's work. Valeris sought war. And worse, aligned herself with the Romulan ambassador, Nanclus.

He was and is an officer of the Tal Shiar.

Intolerable.

Only at the last--when Jim confronted Valeris with the fact of his appropriated log entry, when I faced her there on the bridge and saw the pure absence of remorse in her dark eyes-- did I understand how close I had come to losing him forever, and for nothing more than convenience. She had not borne him any malice. She had simply seen an opportunity, and taken advantage of it.

All this condensed into an irrational rage, when I touched her mind and met the first thought she directed at me.

'Tell her,' she said, 'that I never meant to hurt her.'

It was too close to my own inadequate justifications. All the fear and helplessness I had felt watching the trial, all the self- condemnation I had refused for years to acknowledge, welled up and spilled over into an attack I could not, or would not, stem.

I raped her mind, and when she cried out, what I felt was satisfaction.

. . .

Afterward, Jim came to me and tried to share my guilt, tried to tell me that I should not blame myself for any of it. Tried to tell me that I had not acted out of arrogant, self-righteous presumption when I spoke for him, and denied him the right to choose for himself. But nothing he could say would change any of what I had done. Nothing would erase the stain of my crimes.

Perhaps he did forgive me. But we both knew; I had not trusted him to make the right decision. I had counted my own agendas more important than his judgment, or his grief. It was the last in a long string of mistakes I made with him.

Though he tried to pretend it had not happened, we knew. And in the weeks afterward, there was only the disintegration of something rare and precious, something I had once believed I could not ever lose.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 9582.4:

It's quiet up here. Too quiet. Everything's shut down; everybody's long gone. Nobody left up here but us chickens... and soon I'll be gone, too.

She's a good ship. There'll never be another like my Enterprise, but her daughter's served us well, and brought us home. They're going to decommission her; there's nothing I can do about it.

I'm tired. I mean, the kind of tired you don't easily shake off. The kind that comes when you've done everything, seen everything, lost everything--and then you wake up one morning and find that in the end what it got you was a lot of metal to pin on your chest and a lot of grey hair you didn't need.

I don't know what I feel about what we've done. I think Khitomer will go down in the history books, all right... I just don't know whether it'll be a chapter about lasting peace, or one about the biggest mistake the Federation ever made. I hope it's the former. I genuinely hope it is. We'll see.

Spock's leaving. Today. There's nothing I can do to change that, either. I don't have anything left to offer him, nothing left to keep him from going. He's got a lifetime ahead of him, and more... and I know I shouldn't feel like it's forever. He needs to make his own life, a home, a family. God knows I've kept him from it long enough.

I know I'm asking for trouble, but I think I'm going to go see Carol tomorrow. I don't expect anything to come of it. But after all that's happened, I feel like I want to talk to her. If I could make my peace with David's death, after all these years, maybe she could, too. Andmaybe--"

"Jim, you up there?"

"Yeah, Bones, I'm up here. Where are you?"

"On my way up. Wait for me?"

"All right. But if you think I'm going to Mazatlan with you..."

"Nah. We just want to rescue you from your pit of self-pity. You're not wallowing, are you?"

"Anyone ever tell you you're an unsympathetic smartass, McCoy? And who's we?"

"Guess. And yes, several people. I cultivate those characteristics as much as possible, Jim. But you knew that."

"Right. How could I forget?"

"Beats me. We'll be right up."

"Smartass.

He's right, though, it's time I stopped feeling sorry for myself and got on with the rest of my life. Not much point in moping around the Bridge while the ship hangs here in spacedock, waiting for the inventory crews.

Time to call it a day."

[stop]

McCoy intercepted me that afternoon as I was leaving Wesley's office, my discharge authorization in hand. He was dressed in civilian garb, as I was. We had completed final mission reports on the Enterprise that morning; our retirement had officially commenced.

He was waiting for me in the corridor, leaning casually against a pillar. "Spock, you old boiler," he said, by way of greeting. I did not feel this required a response, and so merely stopped before him. "Why so grim?"

"You are mistaken, Doctor. I am no more 'grim' now than at any other time."

"My point exactly."

"I am certain I do not take your meaning."

He rolled his eyes at that. "'Course not. Silly me. Couldn't be that you're moping, too, could it?"

"Decidedly not." Then I weighed his words. "Moping?"

"Yep, he is. Like a two-year-old who's had his favorite toy taken away. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts he's sitting up there on the Bridge all by his lonesome, dreaming of his glory days."

"'Dollars to...?'" I gave him a questioning look.

"Never mind."

"Have you spoken with him?" I asked at last.

"Nope. But I was thinkin' of kidnapping him, taking him to this little place I know..."

"Doctor, I hardly think that is the sort of distraction he requires."

"Not that little place, Spock," he said with some exasperation. "Another little place. A gorgeous little country inn, on the Maine shore."

"Ah." I considered it. "He is not likely to appreciate your good intentions, in his current frame of mind."

"Right, which is why I'm bringing you with me."

I was suddenly wary. By then the stilted awkwardness between myself and my captain had become almost intolerable. I had been avoiding the inevitable, had not allowed myself to consider the moment when I would have to take my leave of him. I had, I confess, been privately considering the viability of departing for Vulcan without speaking to him again. We had said a few brief words of farewell that morning, on the Bridge before the others, and I had been tempted to leave it at that. The following morning I would be gone, indefinitely, no longer an officer of Starfleet.

The thought of being alone with the two of them under those circumstances I found most... unsettling. ButMcCoy did not wait for a reply. He simply began walkingaway, toward the HQ transport station, leaving me no choicebut to follow.

We did find him on the Bridge. McCoy called up from the transporter room, and when he answered, I knew the doctor had been right about his mental state. There was none of his usual animation in his voice; he sounded depressed, and weary to his soul.

McCoy insisted on chartering an aircar from the San Francisco terminal, though we might easily have transported directly to our destination. He also insisted Jim drive--a transparent ploy which nevertheless succeeded in its goal; our captain seemed to revel in the responsiveness of the small craft. McCoy chattered incessantly at first, but even he fell silent when Jim piloted our car on a low pass through Yosemite, circling Halfdome and El Capitan once each before turning away from the setting sun and heading east, over the mountains.

As for Jim, he spoke little. He seemed to be wholly absorbed in the task of piloting... though he did look at me, once, as we passed the spot where, thirteen years before, I had caught him as he fell from a killing height. I had not thought of it in years. But the sight of that small grove of trees, that sheer, forbidding wall of stone, awakened the memory in me so sharply and with such violence that I had to sit down and make a conscious effort to regulate my breathing. I looked down at my hands. So close... My hands closed tight, remembering. The inertia of his fall had nearly dragged my arms from their joints, and I felt the afterimage of that agony now, and gasped faintly with the force of it.

I believe it was the sound I made which caused him to look at me like that. He said nothing, but I saw him swallow heavily before turning his attention back to the controls.

* * *

The warm glow of lights from the White Horse Inn illuminated the narrow beach below, where we parked our aircar and started up the stone footpath. Gas lamps further lit the path, which was lined with pine trees moving gracefully in the crisp breeze off the harbor.

"You're not gonna believe this place, Jim," McCoy said as we made our way up the hill. "Best sweet potato pancakes in existence. And they've got honest-to-god Guinness on tap."

"Bones, you know I can't drink that stuff. Tastes like antimatter coolant."

"Heathen!"

"This is a beverage?" I inquired.

"Depends on your definition of a beverage."

"Hush, now. Don't you listen to him, Spock. Guinness stout is only the finest substance known to man. Next to a good mint julep, that is..."

"Ugh. Bones, the thought of those two together just turned my stomach."

"Well, you turn it right back, Jim, my boy, because you are gonna love this place."

We reached the entrance, and Jim held the door for us to precede him.

As it had from the outside, the inn resembled nothing so much as my great-grandfather Grayson's house in Connecticut. A very short man in an exquisitely tailored waistcoat greeted us in the oak-beamed foyer. "Gentlemen, be welcome. Three for dinner?"

"Damn straight," McCoy replied, and I saw Jim elbow him in the ribs.

"Yes, three please," he said with an apologetic smile. My captain's mood seemed to have vastly improved in the last hour.

Immediately on the heels of that thought, it occurred to me that he was not my captain any more, and never would be again.

"This way, gentlemen."

We were seated in a low-celinged room at the front of the house, overlooking the harbor. The view, with the stars and the lights from the village across the water winking in the darkness, was quite enchanting.

"You're right," Jim said, taking in the centuries-old accouterments, the huge brick fireplace, complete with crackling fire. I saw his gaze alight on the shelves of antique books in the adjacent room. "I love this place."

"Told you. Been here since seventeen ninety-two or some such ridiculous thing."

"Must be good, then," Jim said, smiling.

McCoy scoffed. "You ain't seen nothin'."

"May I get you gentlemen something to drink?"

"Guinness, my good man," McCoy said, to which Jim made a face.

"I believe I'll have the LaBarre-Picard Blanc eighty-one." He looked up at me over the wine list. "Spock, join me?"

"Very good, Jim."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Philistines."

Jim's eyes smiled at me, and he did not immediately look away. "Thanks, Bones," he said.

"For what?"

At last Jim turned his smile on the good doctor, and I silently released the breath I had been holding. "Rescuing me from myself. This was a great idea."

McCoy beamed, then pretended to scowl. "I do have them occasionally, you know." He gestured in my direction with a jerk of his head. "He's not the only genius around here."

"We know that. Don't we, Spock?"

I lifted one deliberate eyebrow. "I would not care to comment."

Jim's smile widened to a grin, and McCoy snorted. "I'll just bet you wouldn't." He sat back, opening his hand-lettered menu and propping it on the table in front of him. "So, you two, made any decisions?" It was not the choice of entree he referred to.

I opened my own menu, carefully not looking at Jim, though my instinct had been to search his face for his reaction. I felt the weight of his eyes on me. At last, I could not help myself; I glanced up at him for an instant, and then back down again. In my peripheral vision, I saw him turn toward the window and the view of the harbor.

"I'm done with space for a while," he said, and beside me, it was McCoy's turn to look up, surprised. I was a bit taken aback myself; he had sounded quite serious. He flashed a shadow of his scapegrace smile at us, not quite turning from the window. "Don't look so shocked. I've still got the farm, and I think it's time I did something with it. It's a beautiful piece of property... or it could be, with some time and effort." He shrugged. "Besides, I've been wanting to spend some planetside. The Keeler's been in dry-dock too long." I recognized the name of his schooner, recognized the familiar melancholy in his face when he said the name.

McCoy put down his menu. "You're serious."

Jim turned to him with an ingenuous expression. "Sure. Why not?"

McCoy looked askance at me. "Spock, tell him he's crazy."

"Why, Doctor? It is a natural desire, to wish for such things."

McCoy looked disgusted. "Natural for some people, maybe." He jabbed a finger in Jim's direction. "Not for you, Jim. You don't belong rooted to the ground."

Privately, I agreed with him wholeheartedly. But I did not feel, things between us being what they were, that I could make such judgments about the choices Jim made for himself.

He did not rise to McCoy's baiting, but only shrugged. "Maybe you're right, Bones. We'll see."

McCoy stared at him, hard, but Jim did not shrink from his gaze. Finally McCoy turned that penetrating look on me. "What about you, Spock? You settling down to a life of leisure, too?"

I sat very straight, staring at a point near his left shoulder. "As you know, I have been offered a position with the Vulcan Embassy."

"And?"

I met his sharp blue eyes. "I believe it likely that I shall accept." I could feel Jim watching me again, more closely than his casual posture would indicate. It was the first I had given any such indication in his hearing. He shifted in his chair, but said nothing.

McCoy stared at me a moment longer, and then his face broke into an expansive grin that was a fraction too wide. "Well, Jim, imagine that! Spock's decided after all these years to follow in his father's footsteps." He paused, eyes gleaming. "Fascinating!"

He jumped then, surprise temporarily wiping the smile from his face. I strongly suspected that he had been kicked. "Tsk, tsk," Jim said under his breath. "Bones, really. Such behavior is beneath you."

I made a valiant effort to ignore the exchange.

Fortunately, at that moment our drinks arrived, and McCoy forewent needling me in favor of savoring his much-touted beverage. I had to admit that the substance did resemble, in hue and odor, nothing so much as contaminated antimatter coolant. But it seemed to meet with the good doctor's approval.

Jim tasted the wine, nodded to the waiter, who began to pour it into two glasses. "What about you, Bones? Change your mind about private practice?"

McCoy shrugged. "I'll give it a try for a while. Besides, now I gotta keep an eye on you. Make sure you don't go stir crazy, seeing the same stars every night."

At that, Jim looked out over the harbor again. "They look pretty amazing tonight, though."

McCoy and I fell silent, watching him. I caught myself thinking, this is the ending. I have followed him for thirty years of my life, and after tomorrow, I shall be cast adrift, and nothing shall ever be the same.

I wondered if the doctor was thinking the same thing.

"I'm gonna miss you two," Jim said softly, at last, still looking out across the water. "It's been a hell of a ride."

* * *

After dinner we stayed at the table, talking and drinking coffee and brandy, until the owner came out with his young daughter on his hip and sat with us. He asked where we were from, and what had brought us to his inn on a chill spring night, out of tourist season.

"Saying good-bye, I guess," Jim said, mellow with the talk and the wine he had drunk. "Our ship got decommissioned today."

"You're in the service?" the man asked. We nodded. "My oldest girl's at the Academy." His pride and his Gaelic accent evidenced themselves.

"What's her name?" Jim inquired companionably.

"Garrett. Sue Garrett. It's her first year."

"Hope she ends up on a ship half as good as the Enterprise," McCoy put in.

The man whistled softly, impressed. "Hear that, Rachel?" He bounced the toddler on his knee. "The Enterprise. These gentlemen do be famous, I'll wager." The child smiled at the attention, her dark curls bouncing. "Mayhap one day Sue will let you take a tour on her ship, my girl. Would you like that?"

"Well," Jim sighed reluctantly. "It's late, and I'm sure you'd like to close some time this evening. Thank you, sir, for a fine meal, and a fine welcome." He rose, and McCoy and I followed his lead. Michael Garrett showed us to the door.

"Thank you, kind sirs. I hope to be seeing you again soon?"

Jim smiled, but the smile was sad and he did not look at me. "Unfortunately, as much as we'd like that, somehow I don't think the odds are in our favor."

He was right. We parted at the terminal in San Francisco, and after that night, I was to see him only once more.

When he came to see me, here, a year ago.

Chapter Text

Some hours since my last entry. I have received, at last, the information I requested from Starfleet Records, regarding the rescue of the Lakul passengers by the Enterprise-B.

It was illogical for me to make such a request. I had no need of those records. I do not know what good I expected them to do me. I suppose that I hoped for some greater understanding of... why.

But I have just finished viewing the Enterprise bridge recording, and the sensor logs. And I have found, to my astonishment, something utterly unexpected.

. . .

"If you are a physicist," my first-year cosmology instructor said to my class at the Vulcan Science Academy, "you see the universe as a series of inseparable pairs. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Every electron has a positron counterpart. Energy and matter, matter and antimatter, time and gravity... always pairs."

Georges Mordreaux, who taught my advanced temporal physics seminar two years later, had his own version of this theory. "There are two universal truths," he said to the six avid pupils who faced him. "And do you know what they are?" He turned his fierce, hawk like gaze on my neighbor, Alise Kavanaugh.

"Order and entropy?" she hazarded.

He laughed, shaking his head. "Order is entropy." He turned next to me. "What about you, Spock?"

"Probability and wave/particle duality," I answered with conviction.

But again, he shook his head. "Closer. But those are only tools, my dear young scientist, not truths. No. The universal truths which must govern every idea, every theory, every leap of faith that we as physicists dare to make are these: Time is an illusion, and nothing is real."

. . .

For some months, I have been working on a hypothesis based loosely upon the work of a Vulcan physicist named S'ionan, applying Mordreaux's warp field constant to his theories. It seemed to me that, from the combination of these theories one could postulate the existence of a unique kind of temporal singularity, one not yet known to our science.

Black holes, which are a kind of singularity themselves, have provided perhaps more information about the nature and origin of the universe than any other single phenomenon. They were the key which unlocked the secret to faster-than- light travel, time travel, and half a dozen fundamental components of current scientific understanding. All this, from what is essentially a gravity well. It occurred to me that one might speculate on the existence of a similar kind of phenomenon--a kind of temporal well, a place where our objective perceptions of time and causality might cease to exist.

Black holes were my starting point.

When at last, after weeks spent forming my initial hypothesis, I realized the true implications... I sat back from my computer terminal, quite simply astounded. The mathematics of it confirmed my early models, and I was left staring at the figures before me in disbelief. The very existence of such a singularity (if in fact one did exist) would prove, once and for all, centuries of controversial theories regarding the very nature of being.

My old teacher had been correct, I realized. Time was, quite literally, an illusion.

Even then, I considered it unlikely at best that I might actually locate such a singularity in my lifetime. Mordreaux himself had died without ever finding the key.

. . .

What am I to make of this sensor data? Am I so badly unbalanced that I am seeing a correlation where none exists? Can it be that I am hallucinating, imagining the evidence before me? The coincidence is so unlikely that I am forced to question my own rationality. But if my interpretation can be trusted, it is truly extraordinary--for the energy distortion which the Enterprise sensors recorded matches the profile of my hypothetical singularity exactly.

All these months, I have been seeking the very beast that would devour the one thing most dear to me.

[resume playback]

"Captain's Personal Log, stardate 9751.3:

Last entry in this log. It's an old habit that's not getting me anywhere, and it's past time I broke it. I've got three decades of these things on storage wafers that no one will ever listen to, me included. Well, if I needed proof that I'm getting old, I guess that's as good as any.

I went to see Spock yesterday. Saavik called me, told me they were crossing over again. She doesn't like it any better than I do. I tried to get her to come with me, but she said if he wouldn't listen to me, nothing she could say would make a difference. I laughed and told her we were both in trouble, if we were relying on my ability to persuade Spock of anything. The days when I could have reached him are a thing of the past. But, of course, I went.

Needless to say, he didn't listen to me.

I've known for a long time that he doesn't really need me in his life any more. But knowing something in your head and knowing it in your heart are two different things. I went. And it only confirmed what I should have faced years ago-- whatever might once have been between us, it's too late to go back.

He was as stubborn as I've ever seen him. I'm not too proud of my own behavior, either.

Oh, my friend, what happened to us? Was it me? Did I finally ask one thing too many, push you one inch too far? I tried so hard not to push. I never wanted you to be something you weren't. I only wanted it to be like it was in the old days.

I only ever wanted to be near you.

No, that's not true. I wanted to see you happy, too. Problem is, those two things have always seemed to be mutually exclusive.

Definitely time to break this habit. I sound like an old man, dreaming of days that won't come again.

Look. I'm shaking like a leaf. What is that, anyway? Why am I so damned sure that he's not coming back this time, that I'm never going to see him again? I have no answer for that; I only know what I feel.

And what I feel now is... alone."

[end of file]

That is all there is.

The counter on the screen clearly indicates that there are no unplayed files remaining. There are no more files. That is the last.

There is no more of his voice on this disk.

Illogically, I find myself wishing to begin the recording again, listen to it again from the beginning, make certain that I have not missed anything. I know, however, that such an exercise would prove profitless. Therefore it is an impulse I shall not indulge. Not tonight. Not ever.

I have heard all that he will ever say to me.

. . .

Enough. I do not wish to stay in this room. I do not wish to feel this any more. I have had enough.

Why then am I unable to move?

It is late. The sky is empty and dark; T'Kuht has set, and dawn is still hours away. I have turned off all the lamps. The only illumination in the room emanates from my terminal, which shines its cool grey light into the darkness. 'End of file,' it says, and the stardate of the last entry.

And his name.

What was I expecting? Some message of farewell? Some image of him, conveniently recorded in the weeks before his death, for my eyes only? Was I hoping for his forgiveness?

He cannot give it now.

Once, when I believed him gone, I stood with McCoy and watched an image of him on a screen, a phantom-captain who smiled and bade us put aside our differences, for his sake. I was younger, then, and foolish, and that day I had not yet begun to understand what losing him would mean. Thankfully, just when I was beginning to understand, he came back to me, and I buried the knowledge deep and covered it over as a grave with red sand, so that I would not have to know, would not have to think about the day when I would lose him again.

This day.

. . .

You were always able to bend the universe to your will. How could this happen? How could you allow this to happen?

How could I?

. . .

So many times I feared the worst, over the years. I have never counted them. In the Tholian sector... in the catacombs on Janus. Here, on Vulcan--by my own hand. And how many more times did I see the risks he took and keep my silence? I stood by and watched him taunt death a dozen times, a hundred--and yet always, somehow, the worst never came.

He never knew I left Gol because he needed me. Did he know that he was the reason I went there in the first place?

No. I do not think he knew. I do not think he ever really knew what it did to me to stand by and watch him throw himself in the path of every danger, every threat--and know there was nothing I could do to save him from himself. I did not ever let him know. I could not. I am a Vulcan.

And would it have mattered if I had? Would it have stopped him, made him consider any more carefully the risks he took?

Ah, the crux of the matter. If I had been there--if I could have released my stranglehold on Vulcan proprieties just once, just once let him see--would it have made any difference?

. . .

I knew about the launching ceremony, of course. I had commanded the original Enterprise, even if only for a short time. They contacted me, asked me to attend the maiden voyage of this new ship, as they must have asked him. The launch would be broadcast to the farthest reaches of the Federation. Robert Wesley asked me himself. I told him, regretfully, that I could not leave my research. I had no clear reason for declining the invitation, save that I did not wish to endure the scrutiny of the cameras.

Perhaps that was not the only discomfort I wished to avoid. I knew he would be there.

I want to say that it would not have made any difference. That he was too human, too stubborn, and could not change. But the truth is, I do not know. I do not know if I could have stopped him, if my presence would have changed anything at all. I will never know.

At least I would have been there. He was for me.

A sightless being could see the irony, could not help but see the parallel of circumstances. Even a Vulcan could not fail to recognize the similarities. But there was no one to touch his thoughts and keep him safe, or even just to bid farewell through a pane of glass. For him there will be no Genesis. For him there will be no Seleya, no priestesses, no ceremony save the human one meant to console the living.

The service is in two days.

. . .

I will go, of course.

Now that it is too late, I will leave my research and go to Earth after all.

McCoy did not need to demand my presence. He knew I would be there. Saavik will accompany me--that is, I suspect, why she came. Jim's regard for her ran deep and it seems she returned the sentiment; in recent years, she has spent a great deal more time in his presence than I.

Perhaps if I can see McCoy, the others, I will be able to believe it. Perhaps then I will be able to... accept.

So many times I believed him dead, feared him so, tried to prepare myself for the loss... I cannot seem to comprehend the reality of it. The echo of his voice is all around me. I can almost sense his presence.

Perhaps that is why I am unable to leave this room. All the more difficult because I know I will never permit myself the luxury of listening to this taped record of his voice again.

. . .

I shall have to depart at first light. It is time I ceased this self- indulgent behavior and attended to responsibility. If I am to do this thing, I must achieve some measure of control, some level of Mastery. Time is short.

Computer, store active file.

[close entry]

* * *

[stardate 9855.8 ...recording]

I am surprised to find myself here, in the dead of night, sitting in this chair again when I believed myself cured of this particular intemperance.

More than a week now since the last time I sat in this room, speaking to a computer of things which a Vulcan should not feel, let alone acknowledge. Last night I returned from the spaceport, buried myself in S'ionan's writings and believed myself past such conduct. I thought the journey a catharsis, an ending of such destructive habits. I thought I had earned a measure of peace, after that grim pilgrimage.

But now I understand that this is a wound only time will heal, and that I am not now, nor shall I ever be, completely whole again.

The dream which awakened me tonight is ample proof of that.

* * *

Saavik accompanied me on the early morning flight to Earth. By fast warp transport it is a forty-two hour voyage. In deference to Saavik's condition we chose a private cabin, so that she might rest in some semblance of comfort.

T'Sharen drove us to the transport station. She did not offer to accompany us.

I was reminded of her thoughtfulness; her reading of the situation was, as always, remarkably insightful. She knew I would not wish her to see me in such a context, would not want it between us. I know this must have been her reason. How perceptive she is, to have permitted me to make that journey without her.

. . .

Saavik was not feeling well that morning, and so I made her comfortable in the small chaise lounge provided and remained at her side, both of us content to sit quietly, speaking of trivialities and of days long past. She talked of her son, David, who is sixteen now.

She told me incidentally, and it came as a surprise, though perhaps it should not have--that when she was carrying him she believed, for a time, that the child might be mine.

We have never spoken of the Genesis planet and the sacrifice she made for me there. It is too disturbing, too difficult for me to encompass fully. I of course have no memory of those days, and Saavik, for reasons I can understand, is reluctant to speak of them.

My mother, in an uncharacteristic display of restraint, never revealed to me how Saavik came to her, in the early hours of the morning, asking for help. During those long days of the fal tor pan, while the priestesses attempted to refuse my katra with my physical self, Saavik and Amanda were at the VSA learning that the child Saavik carried was, in fact, half-human.

The child of David Marcus.

It should have been impossible for her to conceive a child thus--but I am living proof that the Genesis wave had, as Jim would say, 'canceled all bets.' There is an irony in that, but for Marcus' sake, I cannot find any amusement in it.

I believe that she never intended to tell me. I am certain she only mentioned it on the shuttle, after all these years, to remind me that life continues. She was telling me that though we would mourn my captain in two days time, Jim's grandson would be waiting to meet us.

. . .

David, she named him: a human name, for all that he appears Vulcan. Jim's grandson. That is difficult to grasp. The boy looks nothing like him, and bears little resemblance to his father.

But I can never quite hear his name without remembering that his father died so that she--and I--could live.

Saavik told me once about the day that David Marcus died, revealed to me the part she could not tell Jim or Carol Marcus. She told me how the Klingon offered her his dagger, presumably so that she might die 'honorably,' by her own hand. She told me how she reached to take the knife, preparing to fight with all her instinct and training. Told me how in the moment before she took the weapon, Marcus threw himself in front of her, and took the blade full in the chest. I have often wondered if he would have acted differently if he could have seen her at ten, turning effortlessly to break the moritu's neck in the instant when it struck. If he had known that she was carrying his child.

The child's features echo his mother's almost exactly. He has her thick, unruly chestnut hair, her sharply backswept ears, her formidable bone structure and fiercely slanted brows. He is as intensely beautiful as she--though I am the first to admit I am not entirely unbiased in this area. The boy lacks only her startling cerulean green eyes.

His eyes are another color, more difficult to classify. Neither green nor the pale, clear blue of his father's, but somewhere between copper and gold, with other colors mixed in--and they change with the light.

He did meet us at the gate, his youngest sibling in tow, though his stepfather and his half-brother were not in evidence. I stopped on the exit ramp and watched Saavik with them for a moment. The little one is eight now--can it really have been two years?--and she is full of questions. Her mother braced her hands against her back and bent down, face serious and intent with the effort to answer all of the child's queries satisfactorily. I watched them, thinking of a time years past, and was hard-pressed not to smile. It was then that the boy looked up at me with those remarkable eyes, and I remembered why I had come.

The first difficult reunion came at Saavik's house.

She lives in Seattle, near the lab complex, in a low, sprawling structure on the water. The walls that face the harbor are transparent, and can be opened to the sea, which I find telling; perhaps the years she spent on Hellguard have imbued her with a need for cool breezes and the smell of the ocean.

Carol Marcus was in the kitchen, pouring tea into blue Atlantean china cups arranged on a tray. She looked up when we entered. I found it necessary to remind myself that Saavik has been working with her for over ten years; that for several of those years, the two of them shared a house in nearby Vancouver. Still, it was a surprise. I had not seen her since the commissioning of the Enterprise-A, some seventeen years before.

She has aged, of course. I should expect that, by now--but still I was somewhat taken aback by the degree to which time had left its mark on her face. Her hair was almost entirely silver, a few strands of gold interlaced. She blinked when she saw me, as if in momentary surprise. I, too, have aged, more than a full Vulcan would have--but I do not think that is what caused her hesitation.

Then she smiled, and put the tea kettle down on the counter. "Spock, it's good to see you."

I nodded, replying with something appropriate, and she studied me a moment more. Then she turned. "Welcome home, my dear," she said, going to Saavik and kissing her on the cheek. I saw her lay a hand against Saavik's belly, still smiling, though the smile looked strained. Five days now. I wondered if the footprints of time evident in her face had been as readily visible before the news of the accident.

I was somewhat disconcerted to realize that I had no idea what Jim's relationship with Carol Marcus had been in recent years. I was aware of their parting many years before. Jim had given me the impression that they remained friends, that they still spent time together occasionally. I believe the parting was not his choice. But we had spoken so infrequently in the last two years, and when we did it was always of Starfleet and galactic politics, never of important matters.

Watching her with Saavik, I became abruptly aware that human relationships are nothing if not capricious, and that anything might have transpired in two years.

Saavik permitted the embrace, returning it. "I am sorry I was not here when you arrived," she said, stepping back after a moment. "When did you get in?"

"Yesterday." Marcus turned to finish with the tea. "David, will you help me carry everything out to the deck?" Until now, the young man had remained silent in the doorway, watching his sister at the upright piano in the front room. He stepped forward and took the tray, turning down the hallway toward the transparent sliding doors. "Len was at the house when I got in," Marcus said, to Saavik. "He's on his way over now." This last was directed at me, with a smile that might have been apologetic. "He's been staying with me up at the villa."

I was thankful for the advanced warning. That was a confrontation I had been quietly dreading. I hoped that present company would prompt McCoy to restrain his antagonistic impulses, though I recognized the unlikelihood of such a reprieve.

The cassette he had given to Saavik did not bode well for his current attitude toward me. It had been a gift, perhaps a gift beyond price. But it had also been meant as a chastisement, and I understood that too well. He was angry with me. Not just for missing the launching ceremony--but for all the times I had not been there in the past decade. It only remained to be seen what form his anger would take.

If I could have boarded a shuttle back to Vulcan at that moment, I might have done it.

Doctor Marcus and I followed Saavik and David out onto the deck, the salt smell even stronger than it had been from the front yard. It was August, and the breeze off the water was warm, spilling down from the hills which ringed the other side of the harbor. Marcus glanced at me sidelong as we sat down. "It's been a long time, Spock. We've missed you."

I looked at her sharply, but it was impossible to discern any hidden meaning beyond the obvious. "I regret that I have not had time to visit Earth more frequently."

'We'--was she trying to tell me something? I had to assume it was Saavik's family she was referring to. But her expression remained unreadable. She sat back in her chair, watching me. I searched her face for some clue, some hint of her thoughts, and tried not to appear obvious doing it. "I didn't expect to see you here," she said finally.

I looked down at my hands; I had no answer for that. I could feel her sharp blue eyes on me. When I did not answer, she turned a little to look out over the harbor. White sails dotted the water. Her eyes went distant, and I suddenly found myself thinking that she had known James Kirk even longer than I had, that they had created and buried a child together. Whatever she had felt for him in recent years, this could not have been painless for her.

She sighed. "Well."

Saavik's eldest placed a cup of steaming liquid in front of each of us. He offered me a shy smile, and became his father's son after all, at least for a moment. As long as I did not look at the eyes.

"David," Saavik said quietly, "will you take Aidoann down to the water for me?" I saw him glance at her in surprise, a hint of petulance in the set of his jaw. He could not know she meant it as a kindness to me--could not know that she meant to spare me the reminder of his innocent, liquid gaze. He nodded and left the table, went back into the house.

Saavik did not meet the sharp look I directed at her. She sipped her tea and did not acknowledge it. And I--

I could not deny the brief flash of gratitude I experienced. I did not need any more reminders. McCoy would be here soon; I would need all of my shields intact to face that assault.

"Did you reach Commander Uhura?" Saavik asked. This to Marcus.

"Yes, she's been down at Pavel's since Tuesday. She stayed with the kids last night, while I went up to the lab. Oh, speaking of the kids--are you going to bring them to the service?"

"David wants to come. Kev's going to stay with Daniel and Aidoann."

Kevan--Doctor Walker--was conspicuously absent, as he had been at the transport station. I reflected on the unspoken Terran cultural law which declares the ceremonies of birth and death the sole purview of women. It is a strange phenomenon, and one I have observed many times. One might suspect that human males are fragile creatures, incapable of dealing with these emotional extremes in any sort of practical manner. Perhaps it is that very practicality which gives human females their deep fortitude in times of grief.

It was a strength I was to observe many times before the end of that long day.

"Nyota says Nogura approached her about planning the reception," Marcus said, and I could hear a years-old bitterness in her voice, fresh now, with new fuel to burn. I was not the only one who knew just who had been responsible for Jim's presence on the Enterprise-B five days ago. It was not the first time Heihachiro Nogura had called in a favor, not the first time his public relations maneuvering had exacted a heavy price from my captain. But this time we had all paid it, in spades.

"Do you think the Excelsior will be able to make it back in time?" Saavik asked.

"I don't know." Marcus had turned to watch Saavik's youngest, playing on the narrow spit of sand below the deck. For a moment she seemed to distance herself from her surroundings, as if lost, in another time and place. "I'm sure if Sulu has anything to say about it, they will," she said finally. "Pavel wanted to have a small get-together at his house tonight. I told him it was a nice idea."

Saavik directed a fleeting, half-apologetic glance my way. "What time?"

"Seven or so. I thought we could go when Len gets here. I ought to get some hors d'oeuvres together or something, I suppose." She drifted off, an indecipherable expression briefly twisting her features.

I caught myself thinking that this was a woman who had suffered more than her share of grief, over the years. However, nothing she had said shed any light on the question which was occupying my thoughts; was her sorrow nostalgia for the past, for what might have been--or grief for what would have been, if he had lived? I could not seem to stop dwelling on the implications. I suppose it was difficult for me to realize how out of touch with Jim's life I had really been. It disturbed me profoundly, for no reason I understood, to think that he could have resumed his relationship with Carol Marcus and never told me.

I longed to blurt it out...what was he to you? And if you were not together, if you valued him so highly and did not let him know it--then why? If you loved him, why did you leave him alone?

Perhaps it was not only Carol Marcus I wanted answers from. The question was not so different from those I had been asking myself for the last five days.

In any case, I held my silence and sat drinking tea while the two of them discussed the practicalities of death, and the children hunted for bivalves in the wake of the receding tide below.

My Vulcan armor served me well.

* * *

The sun was hanging low over the harbor when I heard a footstep on the deck behind me, and turned to see a familiar figure rounding the corner of the house.

"Well now, don't you three make an unlikely trio!"

Marcus rose, coming around the table to embrace the newcomer. "Len." She clasped him tightly to her for a moment, her eyes closing briefly. Out of the corner of my eye I registered the fleeting impression of a blue silk tunic, hair gone more to grey than I remembered. I was holding myself still, willing myself still, admittedly reluctant to meet his questing gaze. I had not seen him in almost two years; how ironic, that it should take such extremity to bring us together again.

Perhaps he sensed my sudden apprehension--I was surely broadcasting uneasiness with every line of posture. He did not speak directly to me. Instead he greeted Saavik with a nod and withdrew to the deck railing, waving to the children below.

To my surprise solemn, eight-year-old Aidoann sprinted up the spit and the short flight of steps to embrace him about the legs. I heard him give a suspiciously damp chuckle as he hugged her back. "Hey, little lady, I'm glad to see you too. Where's my other munchkin?"

Her voice was muffled against his tunic. "Father took Daniel to the aquarium."

"Is that right? Looks like you two've got your own aquarium right here." David had followed his sister up the beach, was standing now on the sand at the foot of the wooden steps, watching the exchange. As I was.

She released him, opening her hand to show him the treasure she held clutched within it.

"Well, isn't that pretty?" He took the shell from her, examining it carefully. "Almost perfect, I'd say." He gave it back into her keeping.

Her customary, grave expression had returned. "It's dead," she said softly, with an eight-year-old's instinctive fascination with death. "The shell's empty."

McCoy did not answer for a moment. His back was to me; I could not see his expression. It seemed to me that I was seeing him, all of them, clearly for the first time. The child was obviously at ease in his company. I realized, witnessing her unreserved trust, that McCoy's presence in this house was not the rare occurrence I had thought it to be.

When he spoke at last, his voice was rough; he had to clear his throat. "It's empty now, but if you throw it back, some other creature might use that shell for its house. A hermit crab, maybe."

"Really?" Aidoann's eyes grew large.

He nodded sagely. "You never know."

With great ceremony, she took his hand and led him to the railing. She stood for a moment, considering, and when she had decided on a precise trajectory, drew her arm back and launched the shell neatly into the waves. They stood watching the place where it had disappeared for a moment.

At last McCoy ruffled the child's hair, smiling down at her. "I see your mother doesn't hold a monopoly on the fastball pitch."

The child blinked at him, not understanding. But the reference had been meant for Saavik and myself. McCoy's face was in profile now, and I could see his sudden grin. "You mean your mother never told you about her career as a baseball star? They had a terrific nickname for her at Starfleet Academy--"

Saavik intervened, believing, I supposed, that there were some things her offspring did not need to know. "Perhaps that story can wait until another time. We must go soon, and you need a bath, Aida." On cue, her eldest climbed the steps and took his sister's hand. The child made a face, but followed her brother obediently into the house. McCoy reluctantly watched them go.

Then he turned back to us, taking the chair opposite me, and I could delay no longer. I looked up.

Our eyes met, held, and for a long moment I was aware of nothing else. There was an immeasurable sadness in him, and yet a warm greeting I had not expected, genuine pleasure at seeing me. I had prepared myself for animosity, or at least ambivalence; what I found was welcome.

* * *

"Doctor," I said at last, to break the moment, inclining my head to him. It sounded all right.

"Spock, you old..." But he seemed to think better of whatever he would have said. For once, he did not hide behind his acid wit, or any camouflage whatsoever. His next words were clear and spontaneous, and utterly sincere. "I'm glad you could come."

I tried to find a logical answer to that, but my tongue betrayed me. "You must have known I would."

A sad, half-smile graced his lips. "I hoped."

I held his gaze as long as I could; at last I had to look away. Seeing my own loss reflected in his blue eyes felt too much like an invasion. He seemed to understand, and changed the subject easily.

"How's the missus these days?"

I pictured briefly T'Sharen's reaction to that particular designation. The pressure in my throat eased at the sudden image--no doubt as he had intended. "She is well. She sends her regards." Her absence would not be commented on, I knew; McCoy would remember well that she and Jim Kirk had often been--at odds.

"Any young 'uns in the works for you two?"

A question I had long ago become accustomed to. Impossible to summon Vulcan offense in the face of that good-natured curiosity.

"Not at present." I mustered some appropriate reply. "And are you finding that civilian life suits you, Doctor?"

He grinned, but I could see the effort. We were both reaching for a memory of old patterns. The attempt was stilted--but a comfort, still. "Like a second skin. My practice is boomin', and I even get time off for a mint julep now and then--"

"How your system can survive such repeated poisoning is beyond my understanding." The mock caustic tone came effortlessly.

"--and I don't have to tolerate nearly so many smart ass comments from the peanut gallery."

Not a stitch dropped. Weaving the familiar threads of a lost lifetime. I took my cue. "Ah. I thought something was different about you."

His blue eyes gleamed. "Do tell?"

I paused for maximum effect. "I have always suspected your wit would lose its razor edge, without the whetstone of my psyche to sharpen it on."

He pointed a finger at me, jabbing it threateningly into the air. "My wit's as sharp as it's ever been, so watch yourself, my boy."

Carol Marcus made a sound of disbelieving amusement. "Don't you two ever stop?"

Innocently I cast one eyebrow at her and replied, in unison with McCoy, "Stop what?"

She rolled her eyes.

I met McCoy's gaze again, briefly, and this time I read easily the complex tangle of exposed emotion written there. None of what I saw was anger, or condemnation.

* * *

An hour later, we followed the setting sun west and then south, the aircar banking low over the water under Saavik's experienced handling. Aidoann rode up front with her mother. Marcus and McCoy sat opposite one another on either side of the narrow aisleway, and I had taken a seat at the back of the car. David, Jim Kirk's sixteen-year-old grandson, sat beside me, fidgeting nervously.

I experienced some regret over that; had he mistaken Saavik's earlier dismissal for a sign that I did not welcome his company? It was not his fault I could not entirely control my response to him. He was not to blame for his heritage, his disturbing eye color. Certainly not for my own shameful, confused reactions to his presence.

I could not name what I felt when I looked at him; I knew only that it was not indifference.

* * *

In the year after David Marcus' death, Saavik remained with my parents, awaiting the birth of her child. By the time her son came into the world I was on the Enterprise again, and the dei'rah had taken T'Sharen to a frontier world a thousand lightyears from Eridani.

The child was three months old when I saw him for the first time. His father had been dead a year.

Enterprise was in spacedock for repairs following our close skirmish with the Klingon warbird at the Great Barrier. The crew had been granted a rare chance for extended leave. Somehow my mother learned of this and a message reached me at the starbase, in which she hinted strongly that if I did not use the opportunity to visit the planet of my birth, she and nameless others would be quite displeased.

Sybok was only four weeks gone. I bowed to familial obligation and did as she bade me.

Jim and I went together. That in itself was rare; it was the first time we had taken leave together in almost a decade. Of course I realize now what I failed to then--such opportunities had been one of the casualties of my marriage to T'Sharen.

I think now that Jim was quite aware of this. He made a largely successful effort not to show it, but I remember a joke he made on the transport to Vulcan...something to the effect that if he'd known what it took to get my attention, he would have had grandchildren long ago. I took it as he meant me to--only as a joke--and forgot it.

An idyllic fortnight. Two weeks of nothing but peace and rest and good company: Jim and Amanda, Saavik and her infant son. My father was away, and as it had been when I was a child, the whole tightly controlled aura of the mountain house relaxed in his absence. We spent the heat of the day in the cool darkness of the library, or the lush shade of my mother's many gardens. At night we would share a meal, my mother and my captain maintaining an easy stream of conversation, weaving a spell of family and belonging which was powerful indeed. I remember thinking, on one such occasion, this is the essence of what it is to be human; this is the simple gift of humanity.

Sometimes afterward Jim and I would walk in the orchard, under the stars; sometimes Saavik would come, too. Often the three of us would say little for hours at a time.

One afternoon my captain exercised his considerable charm, coaxing Saavik to leave the baby with him for a few hours so that she might "have some time to herself." The death of David Marcus had bound the two of them to one another in some unspoken way, and she did not protest, but gave the baby into his care willingly.

To my infinite surprise, he was not uncomfortable with the infant. On the contrary, he seemed entirely at home. Jim Kirk with his son's newborn child was a sight I found almost unbearably compelling. I watched him holding that small form and found myself unable to look away.

It occurred to me that he was perhaps attempting to make up for time he had not been permitted to spend with his own son.

Who had died for me.

. . .

"Isn't he beautiful?"

He was looking up at me from the windowseat, the infant held securely in his lap. My assent was instinctive, but I did not voice it. "The term is excessively subjective."

A knowing smile. "Oh, right, I forgot how you hate children." Teasing me.

"That term is also somewhat--"

"Never mind, Spock. Don't worry, I won't tell your cadets that the grim, forbidding Captain Spock has a weakness for babies...if you won't tell the Romulans about mine." He eyed me speculatively. "Do you want to hold him?"

No. I want to watch you holding him.

"I would not wish to intrude..."

"You never intrude. Come on, have a seat."

A long silence, in which he placed the warm bundle in my arms and watched me gentle the fussing child. We were sitting side by side on the window seat of my father's library, the late afternoon sun filtering through the heat-reducing slats. In two days we would be returning to the Enterprise; soon Saavik would return to Earth to face the review board for her actions aboard the Grissom, and after. I was keenly aware of the fact that such a moment was unlikely to come again. He seemed to sense it, too.

At last I looked up to find his eyes on me. I read amusement there, and something else. "What about you and Shara, Spock? You gonna take the plunge?"

I blinked, then caught his meaning. The customary evasion was on my lips, or so I thought. What came out was, "I do not know. I had hoped--"

He waited, then finally prompted, "Hoped what?"

I cleared my throat. Looked down at the sleeping infant to avoid his eyes. "I had hoped that she would come to Vulcan, to pay her regards to Saavik before the lieutenant returns to Earth. I thought perhaps we could speak of it then. But she... could not leave her assignment."

His voice was soft. "Have you talked about it? Having kids, I mean?" He was being cautious, as if I might punish him with my silence for asking too personal a question. Now I understand: he doubted me, profoundly, and with just cause. Only weeks since the most recent betrayal. I had kept Sybok's existence a secret, and the cost had nearly been his ship, not yet a year out of spacedock. I had not revealed to him the full extent to which my unwilling meld with my half-brother had restored my memory.

I had grown comfortable in the insular distance Genesis had placed between us, and had done nothing to close it. After the fal tor pan, it was too easy to let the awkwardness push him away. I might have reassured him, but instead I allowed him to continue to doubt, to wonder how much I did remember, how much his Spock I really was. These were only the latest in a long series of betraying silences I had kept too long.

He sacrificed everything for me; I repaid him with enigmatic omissions. I never let myself see what I had done, until I heard the tape McCoy sent me.

Certainly I did not see it then.

. . .

I answered his question carefully, wary of hidden snares.

"It would not be fair to the child. I am a Starfleet officer. She is dei'rah'se."

I thought that he would berate me for this. But when I met his gaze, I found understanding. "There's never enough time, is there?" His voice was hardly more than a whisper. I knew then that it was Carol Marcus, his son, that he was thinking of. And then he said something which took me utterly by surprise. "I'm sorry for that, you know."

"For what do you apologize?"

He gave me a look which communicated fond exasperation. "Come on, you know what I mean. 'I am a Starfleet officer.' Would that still be true, Spock, if it wasn't for me? You could do anything you wanted. The Vulcan Diplomatic Corps would kill to get you. Same goes for half a thousand universities. You could do research--hell, you could even work with the dei'rah if you wanted. Tell me that you don't want to do any of those things."

"I do not want to do any of those things."

His face twisted in an expression which I could not interpret. I saw him draw a swift, unsteady breath. "By god, if you don't know how to let me off the hook." He looked away. "But that doesn't change the fact that none of you would still be shackled to the Enterprise if it wasn't for some misguided loyalty to me."

It is not misguided, I wanted to say. But the words would not come.

"Thank god Sulu at least had the sense to finally cut the cord. But damnit--I hate feeling like I'm holding all of you back from doing what you really want to do." He caught himself; I saw him make a conscious effort to relax the sudden tension in his shoulders. He turned back to me, his face intent. "Don't wait too long, Spock. Promise me. Don't make the same mistakes I did. And please don't ever throw away your own happiness because of me."

Hearing him say it shamed me. Hadn't T'Sharen implied as much, on more than one occasion? Hadn't I thought something like it, once or twice, in the privacy of my own thoughts?

I wanted to say, I never did that. But I couldn't speak the full truth--that if faced again with the choice I had made a year ago in the engine room, I would choose to die again, if it meant sparing him. Genesis notwithstanding.

And so I said only, "Vulcans have a two hundred and thirty year life expectancy. The probability that I shall produce offspring in the next one hundred and seventy-seven years is extremely high, Jim."

He made a sound that was not quite a laugh. His sudden intensity dissipated, and he sat back against the casement, the humor returning.

"Spock, you know something?"

I merely raised an eyebrow.

"I can always count on you to restore my perspective." He smiled a little, a kind of crooked expression, and reached out toward me with his hands open, palms up. "Now hand over that offspring, will you?"

* * *

The memory of that afternoon returned with startling clarity, when I looked on this young man who wore his eyes. An infant no longer, nor even a boy, I thought. David was tall and slender and mercurial like his father; he was dark and sharply beautiful like his mother. But when he laughed or turned his head in a certain way or looked at me, it was another I recalled.

"S'azhda?" he said now, softly. The Vulcan word: respected one. A form of address used for an uncle, or an older brother. I had called Sybok s'azhda, once.

I met the boy's gaze with some effort. "Yes?"

"How old were you when you left Vulcan to go to the Academy?"

Ah, yes. His childhood fascination had not faded.

"I was seventeen."

He tried to conceal his eagerness. "I'll be seventeen in three months."

"The usual age of entrance candidates is eighteen," I countered.

"But you were only seventeen. And my grandfather wasn't even sixteen." My heart beat unevenly for a moment. It was the first time anyone had spoken directly to me of him.

"He was...an extraordinary case."

David looked a bit defiant. "I'm ready. I know I am."

"Three months is not such a long time."

He sighed, looking at the floor with adolescent shyness. "I know. But it'll be too late to join this year's class. I'll have to wait for next fall."

I gazed at him, finding words on my tongue I had not anticipated. "Perhaps then you would like to come to Vulcan in the spring." And then, trying to mitigate my foolish impulse, I compounded it. "Extra-terrestrial experiences count heavily in one's favor, when confronting the Academy entrance board." I hesitated--but by then it was too late to retract the invitation which had come spontaneously to my lips. "There is an exchange program of early admission at the Vulcan Science Academy."

And, I was thinking, perhaps you will like it on my planet. Perhaps you will wish to stay. T'Sharen and I had been childless for too many years.

The boy's eyes grew very wide. "Really?" He glanced toward the front of the car, at his mother in the pilot's seat. "Do you think Mom would let me?"

"You shall have to ask her."

"I will! That would be great, s'azhda. Thank you!" Excitement was brimming in his face.

I experienced a moment of irrational guilt, and cautioned him in a low voice. "Best not to ask her today, I think." I was thinking suddenly in terms of a mother's instincts and knew, without question, that now was not the time to remind Saavik of her son's passion for the stars.

David nodded conspiratorially, and we rode the rest of the way in silence.

* * *

We were the first to arrive at Commander Chekov's vintage townhouse, which is located alongside Golden Gate Park. He greeted us on the steps, looking drawn and severe and rather dashing in his black turtleneck. Seeing him, I was certain that he had slept little, if at all. He is fifty this year, and fit for his age--but his eyes held the bleak weariness of a much older man.

He stood at the top of the steps, watching us as we came up. McCoy and Marcus reached him first. I saw him gather a kiss from Marcus. He turned to McCoy with his hand extended, but the doctor pulled him forward into a rough embrace.

David placed himself at his mother's elbow as she navigated the steep incline, and perhaps following her brother's lead, Aidoann took my hand in her small one. When I looked down at her in surprise, she gazed up at me with serious concern. She set a small, deliberate foot upon the bottom step, watching me all the while.

Not knowing how to delicately remove my hand, I allowed her to 'help' me up the steps. It seemed to take a very long time to reach the landing. Silently I endured the slight, disconcerting resonance of her thoughts, as well as the somewhat disproportionate amusement of the onlookers. At last we reached the top and I gently disengaged from her.

"Thank you, Aidoann." I fervently hoped that there were not too many more flights of stairs to be traversed. But she seemed satisfied, for she released me, shy once again. I saw her glance toward Saavik, who was making a not-entirely-successful attempt to keep her face expressionless.

"You're welcome," the child said formally, as deadly serious as if she had just prevented some dire disaster.

I did glean some satisfaction from the realization that McCoy was so hard-pressed to contain his amusement that he was literally twitching with the effort not to smile. Saavik's daughter was so very grave that he did not dare laugh at her. I gave him my most serene look, and he made a choking sound. "Doctor, really," I said softly, for his ears only, "you should not suppress your emotions so. It is not healthy."

Then I turned to Chekov, who bowed his head in greeting, his own smile one of welcome.

"My friends, thank you for accepting my invitation. Please, come inside."

In the tiled entryway, he took the trays of hors d'oeuvres from Marcus and led us down a narrow hall with a high ceiling. The hallway ended at the door to a large living space. Comfortable seating, as well as several tables and cabinets, were built into the walls and floor. The cushions and window coverings were layered in shades of pale green and white. I found it a most pleasing design, and stopped just inside the door to better appreciate it.

"Please, all of you. Make yourselves at home. The others will be here soon, and we shall eat and drink together, and talk until the sunrise, yes?"

"Let me give you a hand, Pavel," said Marcus. They disappeared back down the hallway, and McCoy and Saavik stood side by side and watched them go. David and Aidoann had already found the floor-to-ceiling case of books at the far end of the room. I was amazed at their single-minded enthusiasm. I had thought no child could possess an appetite for books more voracious than my Saavik's had been.

"That boy looks terrible," I heard McCoy say behind me. I knew he meant Chekov. "Between the Horatio, and now this..."

I did not wish to talk about the Horatio, or about... other losses. I did not wish to talk at all. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder why I had come here, why I had thought this evening's inevitable conversations were likely to be anything short of unbearable. A silver vase of salmon-colored leaves and tiny white blossoms stood on the mantel. I moved to inspect the arrangement. Unfortunately, the room was not large enough for me to move out of hearing distance.

"How much do you know of details, regarding the Horatio?" Saavik asked the doctor.

"Just that she lost more than two hundred crewmen--more than eighty-five percent of her crew. That it was a miracle any of them survived to make it home at all."

"Do you know... will Pavel be named in the inquiry?"

"He was the first officer. I can't imagine that they'd leave him completely out of it."

"But he was not to blame for the accident..."

"Doesn't matter. Whenever something like this happens, Fleet Command goes for anyone they can get their hands on. And with Captain Flynn dead, he's the first in line." I started at that. It was the first I had heard that the captain of the Horatio had not survived her injuries.

"It does not seem just," Saavik said, after a moment. "Twenty- six people survived as a direct result of his actions. How can they make him a scapegoat for such a disaster?"

"Well, my dear, justice is not always the name of the game, when it comes to Starfleet budget politics. Apparently the initial explosion was caused by a design flaw in the warp field containment system--one that was predicted by opponents of the Paladin-class ship contracts. So everybody scrambles, and the highest-ranking officer takes the fall. It's an old story." He made no effort to mitigate the bitterness.

"Can nothing be done?" Saavik asked.

"Well, Commander Uhura and I--"

I heard footsteps returning along the corridor then. I turned, caught McCoy's gaze. "I was surprised to hear she was in San Francisco," I broke in, hoping to change the subject. Commander Chekov did not need to walk in on this discussion, I thought. Considering what he had borne in the past month, it was likely the last thing he needed.

McCoy seemed to concur. "I know," he said smoothly. "We were all surprised to hear about her and Tamlin."

That, I was not prepared for. "I beg your pardon? I have been rather out of touch..."

"Well, whose fault is that? Ah, forget it, Spock. I'm just giving you a hard time. So you didn't know?" I shook my head in the negative. "They split up, about three months ago."

Marcus and Chekov had returned, bearing glasses and two uncorked bottles. "You talking about Nyota and Tamlin?" Marcus said.

"Yep. Spock here didn't know about the divorce." Marcus shot me a look which said, quite eloquently, that this did not surprise her. McCoy was going on. "It's a damn shame. Don't know what went wrong with those two. They seemed like they were so in love."

At that, Marcus turned away, setting her tray of glasses on the bar. "Love doesn't solve everything, Leonard."

He made a sound of wry amusement. "You don't have to tell me."

Chekov seemed to make an effort to take part in the exchange. He shot McCoy a carefully innocent look, and began to pour the wine. "So, Doctor, on the topic of love, and marriage... what's this I hear about you and a certain Admiral?"

To my astonishment, Leonard McCoy actually blushed. Marcus saw it and began to laugh. At last McCoy grinned sheepishly. "It's all lies. You'll never be able to prove it in court."

It was meant only in jest, but the humor fell suddenly flat. Chekov's hand jerked in the act of filling a glass, and wine sloshed onto the tray. The silence spread out from his frozen expression, and McCoy realized what he had said. "Pavel--"

Chekov shook his head and, very deliberately, put down the bottle of wine.

"Ah, shit. I'm an idiot."

"No. No, forget it. I should not be so sensitive."

"You know it's going to work out. You didn't do a damn thing wrong, son."

"You do not know that." It was hardly more than a whisper.

"The hell I don't!" McCoy flared.

But Chekov just shook his head. Marcus took a step toward him, as if she would touch him, but something in his tightly controlled posture forbade it. Chekov drew a breath. Picked up the bottle and began once more to fill the glasses on the tray. When the last one was full, he took up two of the glasses, straightened, and turned to face us.

"My friends, I appreciate your concern. But that is a discussion for another day." He handed one glass to Marcus, and one to McCoy. Saavik he gave a glass containing something which might have been cider. He handed me the fourth glass, and took the last one for himself. "Today is for old, and very dear, friends." He lifted his glass in a salute to all of us.

McCoy swallowed heavily. "All right. To old friends." He too, lifted his glass, and we drank.

"Hey, I'll drink ta that!" It was Scott, entering through the sliding door which led out to the flitter pad. His eyes came to rest on the wine bottle. "But not with that, I won't." He reached into a well-worn knapsack and drew out a bottle of what I assumed to be very old Scotch. He presented it with a flourish. "I came prepared."

Chekov's expression lightened, a shadow of his true smile, and he embraced Scott without self-consciousness.

All at once the unwelcome awareness surged up in me, and I remembered. These two had shared something more than any of us, for they had been there, with him. They had been the last to see him, to speak with him, perhaps to touch him... but that was a direction I did not wish my thoughts to go. Not now. Most especially not in current company.

While Chekov found Scott a glass, the engineer emptied the remaining contents of his knapsack onto various surfaces: a tin of something rather unappetizing called 'pickled herring,' a white paper bag which proved to contain crisp flatbread still warm from the oven, a container of a white, peppery cheese, and several other diverse comestibles.

It appeared as though the party had begun.

* * *

We spoke of all manner of things over the hour which followed, while the wine and scotch rapidly disappeared. The food disappeared with nearly equal dispatch, though most of it was carried off by Saavik's offspring, to be consumed out of the view of their mother's eye. At one point I saw Aidoann abandon her customary solemnity long enough to stuff a square of flatbread spread with hummus, an olive, and a pear wedge into her small mouth, followed almost immediately by a rather large piece of chocolate. She saw me watching her and showed no sign of shame, nor did she leave any evidence on her person. It seemed that her fast-pitch was not the only trait she had inherited from her mother; I thought of my little cat, at ten, consuming a quantity of food which had so alarmed me that I had once taken her to sickbay for an examination.

I learned that Captain Scott was now working as an Starfleet engineering consultant, part time, and living on his family's ancestral lands, near Aberdeen. He was also, McCoy informed me with rather unseemly delight, 'feathering his nest.' This, I was told, indicates a desire to wed which precedes the actual availability of a suitable bride. I made no comment on the subject, quite unable to comprehend the logic therein.

As more wine was consumed, I also learned that McCoy's Admiral friend was, in fact, not a figment of Commander Chekov's imagination at all. That she was, in fact, none other than Admiral Vasquez, the head of Internal Affairs.

"Internal Affairs!" McCoy chortled. "Now isn't that a hoot. You know, one time we got into her offices in the middle of the night--"

"Doctor, you are providing more information than I find it necessary to know."

"Ah, you're such a stick-in-the mud, you know that, Spock?"

As if by common consent, we did not speak of the Horatio, or the upcoming inquiry, nor did we speak of the reason for our gathering.

For which I was grateful.

* * *

An hour after our arrival, or perhaps a little more, the doorbell sounded.

"That must be our lovely Nyota," Chekov said, and went to greet her. But when he came back into the room, it was not Uhura with him, but a young woman of Asian aspect, in a Starfleet uniform.

I looked up as they came in, and when I saw her, something very strange occurred. I cannot adequately explain it. Perhaps it was her uniform--the first such I had seen in almost two years. I took her for a messenger, an emissary of unknown purpose. Perhaps it was the intense look she gave me when she entered the room. Or perhaps it was the familiar I perceived-- the feeling that I knew her, though I was quite certain I had never seen her before.

Whatever the reason, when I looked up and saw her, for an instant I lost the tight hold I had been keeping on reality.

. . .

She looked at me, sympathy and apology in her eyes. I saw her swallow, as if trying to clear her throat of some obstruction. She reached the center of the room, and stopped, turning to include all of us in her gaze. "Forgive me," she said. "I know that this is going to be a shock." The room grew so silent that I could hear the sound of my own breathing, as if from a distance. She drew a breath. "It was all a mistake," she said.

And chaos erupted in the room, and I put out a hand to steady myself. "Explain," I said, and the sound of my own voice was small and far away.

And she smiled, this young woman with the familiar eyes, and said, "James Kirk isn't dead."

. . .

Of course, she did not say that. It did not happen, not any of it, except in my disordered thoughts in the moment before McCoy said her name.

"Demora! You are a balm to an old man's tired eyes, my dear."

And then I understood that I had, for a moment, been quite dangerously unbalanced. That I had actually had a momentary hallucination. For a moment it had been more real than reality.

The realization stunned me.

She came that night because her father could not. Because she knew he would have wanted to be there. And when she found an opportunity to speak to me alone, her first words to me were, "He saved our lives, Ambassador Spock. I would give anything, if only I could change what happened. I'm sorry."

"He would not change it," I said, all I could manage.

"I know that, sir." She bowed her head, and I knew it was because she did not want to be a witness to whatever betrayal my face wore. "That's what makes it so difficult."

* * *

Hikaru Sulu is the current favored son of Starfleet--an admittedly dubious and uncertain position to be in, even at the best of times, as Jim discovered many years ago. Sulu is a most canny and adroit commander; perhaps he shall continue to maneuver successfully between the ever-turning gears of the military machine. The Fleet's inner politics can cut with a double edge, and cut deep.

His daughter, I have come to learn, is a creature of rare grace, possessing her father's intellect and unerring centeredness, and a genuine courtesy all her own.

Shortly after Sulu's arrival, the doorbell rang again, and McCoy paused in his tale, an exaggerated recount of the horrors of private practice. Chekov excused himself, and Marcus, McCoy and I watched him leave the room.

McCoy shook his head. "He's so thin. I don't think he's eaten a blasted thing tonight."

The Commander had also, I had noticed, polished off a considerable portion of Captain Scott's bottle of scotch. Indeed, it seemed to me that the humans present had all drunk entirely too much for moderation's sake.

"Do you think he'll go back into space?" Marcus said softly. "After this fiasco at HQ blows over, I mean?"

McCoy shrugged. "Who can say? He's got to get past the inquiry, first. Then he's got to get past the guilt. After that... who knows?"

Demora Sulu had joined us, her mostly untouched glass still in her hand. "Have any of you heard anything?" she asked deferentially.

Marcus sighed. "Not yet. They're still taking depositions from the contractors."

Scott approached, and though his gait and hands were steady, his eyes were glassy and his face somewhat flushed. "By god, th' bastards are out for blood, and they dinna care whose. Don't they know the man's got enough ta bear?"

Following that, there was a hush which went on too long.

Sulu spoke, then, saying perhaps the only thing she could think of to break the silence. "They're going to call Captain Harriman before a review board, too," she began.

But it fell flat, and the silence stretched on longer than before. No one present wished to think about Harriman, or about the possibility that if he, if any of us had done things differently...

"What about you, Len?" Marcus asked, a transparent attempt to change the subject. "Are you planning to get back into space someday?"

At that moment Chekov returned, this time with Commander Uhura.

"Uhura, jesus it's good to see you," McCoy said, and swept her into a hug. He was right; it was good. She smiled and hugged him back, and her eyes found me over his shoulder.

Seeing her, I experienced an uncontrollable upwelling of sorrow, as the first lapping of the sea which heralds the rising tide. I looked on her, her eyes bright and great emotion in her face--and knew that I had not adequately prepared myself for whatever was to come. I saw the reflection of that in her response; when she saw me, she swallowed, and her eyes shimmered momentarily.

There were greetings and hugs all around, even from my little cat, who seldom indulges in such displays. Even David and Aidoann appeared from the adjacent room to embrace her, and receive kisses in return. Scott, McCoy and Chekov came close to blows deciding who would be permitted to bring her refreshment. She let them fight it out.

When everyone had made her welcome, she came last of all to me, and to my discomfiture and secret gratification, lifted her face to kiss me, fleetingly, on the cheek. "Spock," she said, and her voice was soft and filled with sadness. "We've missed you."

"I, too," I admitted to her, and if others heard, I did not really mind. "It is... most pleasing to see you, Commander."

She gave me a smile which brought home to me how much I had missed her warm presence... much more than I would have believed. "I knew you would come," she said simply.

Chekov and Scott circled the room momentarily, refilling glasses, and Marcus used the opportunity to lighten the mood of the gathering, which had grown dangerously reflective.

"So, Len, you still didn't answer the question. Is Marguerite Vasquez going to woo you back to the service one of these days?"

McCoy pretended to seriously consider the question. "Oh, sure. I might re-enlist one of these days. You never know." Then he grinned. "If they made me an Admiral, I just might." Amid amused reactions, he gave his glass of scotch whiskey a look of mock-horror. "Whew, Scotty, this stuff must be stronger than I thought."

Scott, mirroring his serious expression, did not miss a beat. He clapped Chekov on the shoulder. "Aye, it was invented in Russia, you know."

McCoy looked up, staring at him in amazement for a full second, and then began to laugh. It had been so unexpected that even Chekov laughed, surprising himself. Then Scott began to chuckle, and Uhura's warm laughter joined theirs.

When Uhura looked at me a moment later, I deliberately lifted one eyebrow at her--my own contribution to the general raillery. She laughed harder, covering her mouth. Her merriment was contagious; Marcus joined in, and even Demora Sulu could not suppress a grin, uncannily like her father's.

It was a rare moment, and I must admit that the feeling was pleasant, a relief from the silent tension. The familiar sound of those voices joined in laughter was one I had not known I missed, until I heard it again. And then that thought penetrated, and I saw it reach the others in the same moment.

A welcome sound it was, but incomplete... for one voice was missing, and always would be.

Uhura caught her breath, and turned to McCoy beside me, suddenly stricken. What are we doing? that look said. How can we be laughing like this, when--?

I saw McCoy realize, too, and I had to turn from the sudden, bright agony which flared in his eyes. But there was nowhere to turn. That same look I saw reach Chekov's eyes, and then Scott's, and the laughter died as suddenly as it had come. Marcus turned her back to me, took a few steps away from the group, concealing her face.

I felt his presence then, powerfully, as if by coming together to mourn him we had conjured the force of his personality in the room. The impression took my breath. Saavik heard the faint sound I made, and turned, and I seized control of my body's reactions and wrenched them into submission.

The others felt it too, I know. I cannot explain it. I only know that in that moment, the full magnitude struck each of us, and all of us--and the sound of that missing laugh, that low, throaty chuckle, was a sound more hollow than any I had ever heard.

"It's all right," McCoy said after a moment, when he could speak. "He would have wanted us to do this."

Slowly, one by one, the others nodded. "Yes," they murmured, and, "You're right."

McCoy gave a heavy sigh, and straightened. "Let's drink to Jim, shall we?" The others nodded. The former Chief Medical Officer of the Enterprise lifted his glass. "To James T. Kirk," he said roughly. "May the wind always be at his back."

"To James T. Kirk," we echoed, and drank. And if my voice betrayed me, if the glass I lifted to my lips trembled slightly--I might find consolation in knowing mine was not the only unsteady hand in that room.

* * *

They spoke of him then, of days past, and I listened and said nothing. When I could not bear it any more I went out and stood on the balcony at the side of the house, looking across the street to the park. A few late-night joggers passed silently from one pool of lamplight to the next. A white cat flickered like a moth across the grass, paused at the edge of a copse of trees to watch me, watching her. Her posture said, I see you there. I simply choose to ignore you. That communicated, she turned and disappeared into the shadows.

I gazed out into the night and thought about what it was to be a Vulcan. I had left the room because I could not properly control my own reactions. Because I did not wish an audience to my failure. But also because they had needed time to grieve together... and they would not give their emotions free rein in my presence.

I watched the cat reappear at the far side of the copse, watched her as she sniffed her way along the edge of a flower bed. She seemed quite comfortable in her solitude. She gave me one last, knowing glance before vanishing into the night.

Some time later, perhaps hours later, I became aware that another had stepped out onto the balcony, stood waiting silently for my notice. I turned. And it was Saavik's eldest child, watching me with those eyes, studying me silently in the moonlight.

"David." My voice was hoarse from disuse. I cleared my throat. "I apologize. I did not see you there."

He only shrugged. "Mother said to come tell you, we're going home in a few minutes."

"Ah. Yes, thank you." I waited, but he did not immediately turn back to the house. "Was there something else?"

I could not tell for certain in the faint light, but I thought perhaps he blushed. He looked down at his feet. "S'azhda..."

I took a step toward him, suddenly wishing that he would look up, show me again that impossibly familiar gaze. Then I recognized what I was doing and stopped it. "Yes, David?"

And he did look up, eyes wide and infinitely sad, and when I met that look there was suddenly a liquid heat, rising at the center of my chest. "I want to be like him," he said in a rush, and I knew that if the light had been better, I would have seen the blood darken his cheeks. He looked suddenly anxious, as if this were a matter of imperative seriousness, some finite objective he had set for himself, in which he could not fail.

"You will be," I said, and it was the truth, but of course it was a lie, too... for no one would ever be like him.

It seemed to satisfy him, though; he nodded, once, and we went inside.

* * *

Chekov and Uhura saw us to the landing at the front of the house. Neither McCoy nor Scott were in evidence. "They went to get more scotch," Uhura confided, shaking her head. "Heaven help us." We shared a brief, silent communion. I wanted to say something to her about Tamlin Rourke. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry--that if anyone deserved better, she did--but her dark eyes seemed to read the thought without the need for words.

I could read easily the words she would have said to me.

Carol Marcus came out, carrying a tired Aidoann propped against her hip, the child's dark head resting on her shoulder. Marcus reached us and hefted the girl to the ground, ruffling her hair. "Oof, child. How much did you eat tonight?"

"Not that much," she said sleepily.

"Only three times your body weight," Saavik said dryly. She, too, appeared barely able to keep her eyes open.

"Did not."

"Did too," said David, and Aidoann frowned forbiddingly at him.

"Hush, both of you," said Saavik.

"We'll meet you down there tomorrow?" Chekov was saying to her.

She nodded. "We'll take two cars. Then the three of you can ride back to Carol's house with us, if you like."

"You don't have to do that, Carol," Uhura put in. "They'll have a reception tomorrow, after the service. We can visit there."

"It's no trouble. Besides, I don't trust Nogura not to turn the whole thing into some kind of media fiasco. We'll want to have an escape route."

Uhura sighed. "You're probably right."

Chekov embraced Marcus, kissed her on the cheek. He kissed Saavik, too, and she permitted it. "Thank you for coming. It was wonderful to see all of you." He looked to me, and the wounded darkness in his face made my throat ache. I surprised him; I put out my hand, in the human fashion. After a moment of hesitation, he took it.

"Thank you," I said.

I do not know if he understood, that what I thanked him for was his presence on that ship, in my place. That I thanked him for bearing what should have been mine to bear. I believe he did understand. He nodded, and I released my grip, stepped back fractionally. "Commander," I said, turning to Uhura, "it has been, as always, a privilege. I hope to speak with you tomorrow."

"Of course," she said. "Tomorrow."

We went down the steps, David at his mother's elbow, Aidoann taking Marcus' hand. As we pulled away from the curb, I turned and looked out of the window, to where Chekov and Uhura still stood, watching. Chekov lifted a hand in farewell.

That night I attempted once again to sleep. Five days now, almost six. I lay awake for some two point one-five hours, thinking of the day which was to come. When I finally slept, all my dreams were of a white cat, who smiled at me and had Jim's eyes.

* * *

I still do not know quite how it happened.

'We'll take two cars,' Saavik had said, and when Uhura objected, Carol Marcus responded, 'It's no trouble.' I suppose there is the possibility that she manipulated the situation thus, for her own purposes.

Admittedly, I was not functioning at peak efficiency. I really do not know how I ended up in the second flitter that morning, in the passenger seat, with Carol Marcus at the helm and the other seats empty. I cannot be certain whether the arrangement was planned, or purely accidental.

I realized that I had effectively trapped myself only as she operated the controls, and our small craft lifted off the ground.

We swung out across the harbor, arcing first west and then south, following the coast. The afternoon sun was coming in through the starboard portal beside me; it was pleasantly warm, and I did not draw the ultraviolet shield. For nearly fifteen minutes, we traveled in silence.

Then, as if casually discussing the weather, Doctor Marcus said, "Tell me something, Spock."

"Yes?"

She touched the autopilot control, and swiveled to face me. Uncertain of what was coming, I met her cool gaze. She tilted her head on one side, speculatively. "I've been trying to figure it out since yesterday, and there still one thing I don't understand. Why did you wait so long to come?"

I blinked.

"He was supposedly your best friend. You had to know how he would feel about this stupid launching ceremony, Nogura's little media circus. What was so important that you couldn't go with him, Spock? I mean, you're here now. Isn't it a little late?"

My shock must have been naked on my face. I found myself struggling to breathe, and utterly speechless.

She dropped all pretense of equanimity, and lashed out. "Oh, come off it. Don't look so surprised. You think it wasn't obvious to all of us how hurt he was? You think none of us saw how he felt, knowing you didn't need him any more?" Her lips twisted bitterly. "Oh, right. 'Ambassador Spock' can't afford to waste time on something as unimportant as friendship. I forgot."

I tried to find words. The blood had left my face.

"Wasn't it enough that he loved you, that he gave you more of himself than he ever could give the rest of us? Or was that the problem, Spock? Did his feelings make you uncomfortable?" Her bitter ire scalded me, left me raw and bleeding.

I had forgotten this bitterness in her, this anger. She had nursed her resentment of Jim's absence for years before Khan took the lives of her friends, before Kruge took her son. And after, she had blamed him, them, the galaxy at large for the losses she suffered. It was the anger, the blame, which had always come between them, which had finally driven James Kirk and Carol Marcus apart. How had I forgotten?

The anger had not been hers alone. I remembered now, belatedly, a night in San Francisco many years before. Late, after a Starfleet function where he had drunk a little too much, Jim had raged quietly to me about the death of his son. He, too, had needed someone to blame, had learned to hate. He had blamed himself most of all, but had saved a measure of rage for Kruge, for Khan, for Klingons in general--and for the woman who had allowed Genesis to go forward, in spite of its flaws, the woman who had kept his son from him until it was too late.

I was the one person he never blamed, though I would have understood if he had. I had tried to help him master that rage, but had never really gotten through to him. Volunteering him for the Klingon peace mission had been my last, desperate attempt--and it had nearly gotten him killed, had been the final betrayal which came between us.

Even then, he had been unable to stay angry at me. But Carol Marcus had given me no such absolution. Now it appeared that she blamed me not only for her son's death, but for his father's as well.

The accusation was utterly unexpected, utterly irrational. But something in me was shouting agreement. These were my crimes, and I was only too willing to accept the guilt. Lacking thy shield, I shall shelter thee. Lacking thy sword, I shall defend thee.

Yes, exactly. Of course his death was my fault--after all, I was not there.

I do not know what my silence told her. There were no words in me to answer her rage, her grief. I merely looked at her, and abruptly her eyes widened, thoroughly shocked, as if only then did she realize what she had said. For a long moment, I was certain that she would weep, and I understood that she had meant nothing she had said to me--had only needed to hurt someone, as she was hurting.

My burning questions seemed suddenly unimportant. What did it matter whether she and Jim had resumed their relationship, or had not spoken to each other in a decade? Her grief was the same.

"Oh, Spock," she began, horrified, and could not finish. I saw her realize that such words could not be taken back, or excused. But she did not weep, still wound too tightly for the human necessity of tears.

"You need not explain," I managed. Wanting only to end this purgatory. "I understand."

She made a sound like a laugh, caustic and a little unbalanced. "You do, don't you?"

I did. I would not tell her how well I understood the need to strike out at something. I would not tell her how badly I wished there were someone I could hate for this, someone I could punish.

She raked shaking hands through her silver-blond curls. "God, I'm a monster."

"Let us not speak of it."

"I'm sorry. Oh, Spock, I'm so sorry."

"It is forgotten."

Silence reigned for many minutes. The Oregon coast rushed by her viewport; to my right, there was only sea, and sun, and sky. When she spoke again, her tone was much subdued.

"We were just starting to be friends again, you know."

She was watching the water rush by under the flitter's nose, not looking at me. I glanced at her once, then my gaze turned outward, mirroring hers. I said nothing.

"I was starting to think we could manage that. Since Khitomer, things were better between us. I thought maybe he was starting to let go of it--maybe I was, too."

"Better?" The word slipped out before I could stop it. Had my 'arrogant presumption' actually done him some good?

"Yes. I thought so, anyway. After Khitomer, he seemed to have finally put things behind him." Her voice caught. "I guess that's what really gets me about it--the timing."

I was hard-pressed to keep the disbelief from my face. What would have been the right time? I wanted to ask. And yet I understood. Somehow, none of us had been prepared. I had said it myself; I was not ready.

She sighed. "Well, you can understand that. I mean, I know it wasn't all one-sided, between you and him. Believe me, of all people, I know how stubborn he could be."

"Doctor Marcus--"

She made that sound again, the one that was not quite amusement. "Call me Carol, please. I've just attacked you, completely without provocation, and here you are calling me 'Doctor Marcus.' Don't make me feel worse than I already do!"

"Very well. Carol." I drew a breath. "Why do you assume that I was avoiding him?"

"Weren't you?"

I did not flinch. "Certainly not. You make it sound as though we were children, engaged in some petty disagreement over a sporting event. We parted on amicable terms." True, as far as it went. But a lie nonetheless. I was fishing shamelessly for information, for answers to questions I could not ask.

She appeared genuinely puzzled. "I was so sure...he was so closed off when he came back from Vulcan, that last time."

"Closed off?" But I knew that look--had seen it on him when he left that day. He had not expected ever to see me again. And though he was mistaken about the circumstances, though I had thought him paranoid, overreactive--I had seen the knowledge in his face. Bitter irony that he had been, as he so often was, right.

"Uncommunicative. He wouldn't tell me why he left so suddenly, or why he came back so soon. I assumed you'd had a fi--a disagreement."

"No." Then, in the interest of honesty, I amended, "Not precisely."

"Not precisely?"

"Not--entirely."

She eyed me skeptically.

"He did not approve of a decision I had made," I said, more defensively than I meant to.

She gave me a look that said, quite eloquently, that this explanation was not a satisfactory one. "That's all?"

No, of course it was not. But how did one explain three decades of misunderstandings, an accumulation of small betrayals, of difficult choices, which ended in a year of silence? "Affirmative."

An incongruous phrase had spoken itself into that instant when I did not immediately answer her: continental drift.

For a long moment, Carol Marcus stared blankly into the middle distance. She seemed to struggle with a memory, with my words. Her voice betrayed her frustration.

"But then why--?"

I looked at her. What was she asking me? Why had a simple disagreement hurt him so deeply? Why was I, a Vulcan, speaking openly to her of such things? Why hadn't I been on the Enterprise with him five days ago?

Why had the universe taken him from both of us, before we could tell him that he was not alone?

I said, "I do not know."

. . .

Mercifully, by flitter it is only thirty minutes from Seattle to San Francisco.

* * *

There were roses, roses There were roses And the tears of the people ran together.

--from a song by Tommy Sands

* * *

As many hours as I had spent preparing myself for it, still I was overwhelmed by the scene which greeted us as we flew in over the Presidio. Small ocean-going craft of all descriptions choked the near end of the bay.

The Academy parade grounds were in chaos. I registered a jumbled confusion of flitters, groundcars, and people--easily three thousand of them. People everywhere: on sidewalks, leaning over the railings of the suspended walkways, seated in chairs and on planters spilling over with blossoms and on the wide grassy lawns. People in Starfleet uniforms and cadet dress grays and civilian black and navy and charcoal, a sea of muted humanity. And more coming from all directions.

Carol Marcus and I exchanged a look--I saw the stunned astonishment in her eyes. I suspect she read much the same expression in mine.

A cadet signaled to us, as if he had been directed to watch for our car. He waved Marcus down to a narrow vacancy on the grass. As we neared the ground, I realized that 'humanity' had been rather a misnomer. Many among the crowd bore extraterrestrial features of one variation or another.

It seemed that half of the Federation had turned out for the occasion.

Marcus set the flitter down, and preceded me out onto the lawn. As I stepped into the sunlight, Commander Uhura hailed us, waving from across the quad, and Marcus began picking her way between the parked vehicles. I followed. In a few moments we had reached the place where Uhura, Saavik and David waited in the shade of a spreading oak.

Uhura was the only one of the former Enterprise officers who did not wear a Starfleet uniform that day. For McCoy and myself, it had been almost two years; perhaps we chose to wear the uniform out of some kind of unconscious tribute. In contrast, the white-and-gold silk caftan Uhura wore transformed her--and I remember thinking, seeing her, that it was a different kind of tribute she had offered. One Jim would have enthusiastically appreciated.

My attention shifted to Saavik. She appeared tired, her hands braced against her lumbar vertebrae, as they frequently had been in previous days. It has been a difficult pregnancy. I turned to her, preparing to inquire after her well-being. As I did so, I saw McCoy coming up the hill from the west, laboring at the exertion. His dress uniform hung on his spare frame; I suspected he had not worn it since that fateful dinner with Gorkon and his daughter two years before.

I watched him, more than a little taken aback by the effort his ascent was costing him. We are none of us young any longer, and I am certain the fact was made vitally apparent to my human colleagues that day. McCoy saw me watching him and flashed me a wry, fleeting grimace of acknowledgment.

Behind him came Pavel Chekov, walking slowly with Captain Scott, deep in serious conversation. Something about seeing the two of them together...pained me, as it had the previous night. It was these two who had been with him, where I should have been--these two alone who had not received the news of his death second-hand, but had seen it with their own eyes. The tight, dark aspect both wore suggested they, too, were aware of it.

It occurred to me for the first time that I did not hold a monopoly on self-condemnation.

"Oh, damn it," I heard McCoy mutter incongruously as he reached the top of the hill, and something in his tone made me turn, though he had not been speaking to me.

Uhura, too, had been watching the pair's approach; I followed McCoy's pained look in time to see the tears she tried to conceal. I saw her shake her head once, furtively, at McCoy. The tears did not spill; by the time Scott and Chekov reached us, she was smiling in welcome.

I turned, and walked a little distance down the sidewalk, unable to remain still one moment longer under the external pressure of such strong emotions. I could not think. The unbridled turmoil raging all around me had come perilously close to overwhelming me, and my own control was unsteady, at best. I felt eyes follow me--McCoy, Saavik--but I could not spare thought for them.

I gave over all awareness to strengthening my shields, until I could see again.

I do not remember what words were spoken, if any, during the long progression we traced across the quad and the parade grounds to the podium they had raised. All eyes turned to us, it seemed. Instinctively we remained close together, walking in pairs, making our way slowly over the grass. That journey might have lasted hours, or only minutes.

What I remember is those dusk-crimson blossoms, spilling from dozens of planters, splashing vivid hues into green spaces, brilliant against the dark colors of mourning. The smell of freshly-turned earth filled the air--I remember that. I remember that Carol Marcus turned to McCoy beside her and said wonderingly, "Oh, jeez. They're wild roses," before bursting quietly, at last, into tears.

I learned later that the cadets had planted them in the flower beds that morning. Wild pink roses--the state flower of Iowa.

Someone had arranged for a low dais with a podium on the tiled patio between the arboretum and the reception hall. As I came up the walk, my eyes fell upon Captain Sulu standing off to the left of the small platform. He nodded slightly as we approached; it was the first time I had seen him in person in more than five years. It seemed Excelsior had broken all speed records to get there in time.

There were other faces I recognized, had not expected. Harriman was there, Demora Sulu with him. He did not look directly at us, but stood nervously consulting a square of white paper: whatever eulogy it was he had deemed appropriate. A flash of something dark and primal surged in me, and I put it down with swift precision.

Behind Harriman stood Nogura, talking in low tones with Robert Wesley and Jose Mendez. Komack stood apart, and what I read in his face was mainly impatience to be done with such sentiment.

Near the dais, I caught sight of two tall, slender figures in Starfleet dress--Christine Chapel and Janice Rand. Chapel lifted one hand in greeting, and I saw her touch Rand on the elbow. They came across the grass to meet us. Chapel embraced first Uhura, then McCoy. Rand and Uhura held to one another for a longer moment.

"Welcome, my friends," Chapel said, to all of us, though she did not meet my gaze. I became aware that my shipmates were all quite deliberately avoiding looking at me, as if by pretending I was not present they could spare me some measure of fallout from these all-too-human proceedings. I wondered, fleetingly and with detachment, if this odd consideration were the result of some spoken agreement, or merely spontaneous instinct.

I wondered if I was so transparent.

* * *

He was not a man who had ever spared time for a family. We sat in the row of vacant chairs in front of the dais; I remember thinking that Saavik's son was likely his only blood relation in that vast sea of faces. There was certainly little of his vivid presence in the stiff, self-consciously military ceremony.

I remember thinking, these eloquent bureaucrats did not know him. They are talking about no one I have ever met.

I tuned them out. Several times, I caught my thoughts wandering. For a time I drifted the pathways of memory, and forgot where I was, thinking of other places, another lifetime. The summer sun was pleasantly warm.

At last the formal speeches ended, and the captain of the Excelsior stepped forward, into a silence which seemed to spill outward from his compact figure. It spread out across the parade grounds, a stillness that waited. I saw him exchange a long glance with Pavel Chekov in the moment before he spoke.

I was primarily relieved that it was Sulu on that platform, and not myself.

He began simply. "Thank you for being here today. It means a great deal to me that so many feel this loss, as I do. I know that he would be moved by your presence. He wouldn't understand what all the fuss was about--but he would appreciate it, nonetheless."

He smiled a little at that, and a soft ripple of amusement, unsteady and short-lived, passed through the front rows of the assembly. He was right, of course. I could almost picture Jim's bewilderment, were he to find himself confronted with the crowd that had turned out to bid him farewell. The image rose, sharp and unbidden.

"He often said that he was a soldier, not a diplomat. It is true that he was a man of action. If there was ever a man who lived for the stars, it was James Kirk.

"But I always saw him as something of a philosopher-king, in the truest sense of the word. He had a poetic soul--and I think he might forgive me for waxing a little poetic today."

Another ripple of amusement, stronger than the first. Memory supplied me with an image, a recollection as bright and bittersweet as if it had been preserved in crystal for just this moment: Leonard McCoy saying, with exasperation in his tone and affection in his eyes, Jim, you know something? You sure can talk a blue streak when you get going. I swear it's amazing we ever get anything done around here, between your high-brow philosophizin', and Spock's long-winded analyzin...'

I forced my attention back to Sulu.

"His presence was a driving force in my life--and I know I'm not the only one here who felt that. There is seldom a day that goes by when I don't think at some point, what would Captain Kirk do, in a situation like this?

"I could not begin to measure in words all that he was, and I won't try. I doubt there is anyone here today who is not aware of the sacrifices he made, the immeasurable value of what he gave to all of us, to this planet, and to the Federation--indeed, to the galaxy. Peaceful relations with the Klingons have become the expected norm in the last two years, thanks in large measure to the quick, courageous and selfless actions he took in those crucial days before the Khitomer conference. On more occasions than I can count, that same quick thinking saved my life, and the lives of my shipmates.

"I do not know what words would suffice. I don't know if there are any. All I know to say is that I measure every day of my life by the standards of courage and honor he demanded from himself, every day of his. He was my captain. There will never be another like him.

"When I received word of the events which transpired aboard the Enterprise-B, I grieved, but also I thought how right it was that he had died saving the Enterprise. As a starship captain, I can understand something of what he would feel about that; I knew, instinctively, that he would have approved of a universe that unfolded thus. And thinking this, what came to me was a line from a verse I had known as a child: 'Glad did I live and gladly die...'

"It is something my mother taught me; she was born in Samoa, where the name Robert Louis Stevenson is well known. It is his epitaph I recalled, and I believe it to be most appropriate, for a man who was a starship captain and a hero--but also a poet, and above all, a man of personal integrity, and great moral courage."

He paused, and there was no sound at all save the distant sounds of the bay. I experienced the distinct, somewhat disturbing sensation of existing separate from my body, a disembodied, unfeeling specter observing the stranger at the podium. I had no understanding of time, or location, or physical reality. I was adrift.

Sulu closed his eyes, and spoke from memory.

"Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This is the verse you grave for me:

'Here he lies where he longed to be;

Here is the sailor, home from the sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.' "

Silence, silence. A breeze came up, wafting the fragrance of the roses across the grass. I was very far away.

At last he cleared his throat, and looked out over the crowd again. For the briefest of instants, his gaze touched mine, and it pulled me back to the present like an electromagnetic pulse. Something passed through me. My lungs seized, and there was a rushing sound in my ears. I could not breathe. Then the moment was past, and I was able to hear him say, "We have lost a giant. I suspect we have only begun to understand the magnitude of the loss."

He stepped back from the podium. As if that were a signal, Uhura and Scott rose from their chairs and went toward him. I saw Uhura squeeze Scott's hand, saw a flash of brightness, tears on her dark face. The two of them stepped up onto the low platform, and Sulu came to meet them. He exchange a long glance with both of them, and I saw him smile. His eyes, too, were unnaturally bright. Then he turned and came to sit in the chair Uhura had vacated.

I do not know what I expected. I was not thinking clearly. It seemed to me that one moment Uhura and Scott were the only figures on the dais; then, as if by sorcery, there were others there, strangers. They were carrying misshapen, awkward burdens, which a moment later I recognized for musical instruments. A shallow, hand-stitched drum. A fiddle. A mandolin, the likes of which I had not seen outside a museum. One of the strangers unwrapped the bulkiest of the objects and handed it, carefully, to Montgomery Scott.

Bagpipes.

. . .

Music has always held a certain power for me. It is a force I have seldom made concessions to.

I play the lyrette with some skill, yet it has been years since I played for an audience. When I was younger I did, occasionally. I did not know then what music did to me, how much I revealed when the notes and the rhythms took me outside of myself, and transported me. I did not recognize the danger.

. . .

I must have stirred, or made some sound, because Saavik turned to look at me and then, very carefully, did not look at me again. The musicians began to play.

It was not Amazing Grace, though I had steeled myself for it.

* * *

Some years past, I had been sitting with Jim at a concert, part of a diplomatic function we had been required to attend. The performance was quite remarkable. It was a group of Earth- African women, six of them, who needed no instruments save their voices to create a rich and compelling tapestry of sound. I was completely immersed in it, and trying to remain unmoved--without complete success.

They finished an original piece, a haunting melody reminiscent of deep desert nights, of stars and sand and, for me, childhood memory. After the applause subsided, they transitioned into a slow, traditional-spiritual rhythm. In low harmony, they began to sing.

Three bars into the piece, completely unexpectedly, Jim stood. I glanced up in surprise, but he was already turning, making his way, clumsily in the darkened theater, toward the aisle. Something about the way he was moving, pushing hurriedly past the annoyed officers and diplomats, worried me. I thought he might be ill and got up to follow.

Outside, he did not pause but kept moving, striding across the plush carpeting as if pursued. At the glass doors to the landing, I caught up with him.

"Captain?" He glanced back, surprise in his face; his step faltered. I saw that he had gone quite pale. My concern deepened. "Are you well?"

The tightness in his face eased, but he did not stop until we were out on the landing, the glass doors swinging shut behind us. "Yes, Spock, I'm fine. It's nothing."

"You departed rather suddenly. I thought perhaps you were ill."

Unexpectedly, he colored. "No, no. Nothing like that. I'm fine, really--go back and enjoy the concert."

He was aware of my interest in music, knew this performance was a rare opportunity. But he was not meeting my gaze.

"Jim, something is wrong. Tell me what it is." This came out in a much more intimate tone than I meant it to. Clumsiness, uncontrolled haste, were uncharacteristic for him. Whatever was troubling him, it had disturbed him deeply.

His eyes met mine, finally. He seemed to search my face for answers to questions I could not see the shape of. I did not know what answers I was giving him. Finally, he drew a breath, blew it out abruptly. Closed his eyes.

"It's really nothing, Spock. I just--can't listen to that song."

Whatever I had expected, it certainly was not that."The--?"

He looked at me again, and now he was all right, just embarrassed. "The song. Amazing Grace. I can't listen to it."

"I do not understand." An understatement.

He laughed a little at that, sighed, running his fingers through his hair. He began to pace, just two steps to one side and back again, not realizing he was doing it. James Kirk could handle almost anything the galaxy could throw at him--but he was utterly incapable of standing still. "I don't really, either."

I tried not to let him see what I was thinking, which was that my captain had finally lost his grip on his mental faculties. "You do not care for the melody?" I said carefully.

My expression must have struck him as comical, for his lips twisted with wry humor for an instant. "No, it's not that." He spoke lightly, but I could see that he had been, quite profoundly, shaken.

"What, then?"

He stopped, his hands lifting toward me, tightly clenched. A frustrated plea, or a gesture of helplessness. "Spock..."

"Jim, you are behaving in a most atypical manner. I presume you would rather explain it to me than resort to the alternative."

He almost smiled. "Which is?"

"I could order McCoy to perform a complete psychiatric evaluation on you as soon as we return to the ship."

"Hmm." He pretended to consider it. "Tempting, but..."

I stood my ground.

At last he shrugged with affected offhandedness. "We played it at your memorial service." He looked away. "God, that sounds weird. I mean, you're standing right here." I saw him shudder, saw him try to suppress it.

"Yes, Jim," I said, trying to reach him. "I am."

For a long moment he stood, face averted, not moving except for his hands, which gradually released their tension and unclenched. And then he turned, and I saw that his eyes had grown very large. They were a deep, clear amber--and too bright.

He said hoarsely, "I'm glad. I don't know if I've ever come right out and told you that." He swallowed, and suddenly there was no pretense in his face at all. Seeing him like that stopped the breath in my throat. "It was hell, losing you, and I don't ever want to do it again."

As soon as the words were out, he turned away again, his back stiff, his posture too abruptly still, as if saying the words had taken something vital out of him. I realized that my stunned reaction had actually made it to my face, but that he had not seen it; I composed myself with some effort. My heart was beating...considerably faster than normal. At that moment, I do not believe I could have spoken if my life depended on it.

"It just gets to me," he said finally, so low I almost could not hear him. "That song. Reminds me of those days after-- afterward. How awful they were." He sighed, then, and I saw him start to shrug it off, make light of the moment before he could cause his Vulcan friend any more discomfort. "You probably think I'm crazy. I see you every day, and here I am acting like..." He made a sound, a kind of nervous laugh. "Hell, I don't know what I'm acting like."

His confession gave me courage. His hand was clenched now on the edge of the wide, curving window which looked down over the bay. Before I could consciously consider my action, I reached out. My hand closed over his. Very deliberately, I let my shields expand outward, let myself "hear" him, let him sense what he could from me. It did not take much; the natural accord between us made it seem effortless.

I am here, I told him.

Our thoughts met, intertwined in silent understanding, separated. An instant only. I let my hand fall. He stood very still, and I saw that he had closed his eyes. In the hush of his held breath, I could hear, very faintly, the last verse of the old Earth spiritual fading to silence.

I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now...

It was the only time I ever touched his mind without a logical reason, without the excuse of duty or imminent peril. Only for myself, because I desired it.

That was fourteen years ago.

* * *

I had prepared myself for Amazing Grace. But the music Uhura and Scott made for him that day was something else entirely.

The drum began it, and the pipes, the fiddle and mandolin joining in together. The rhythm was wild and fast, the melody minor key and full of vibrant energy. And when Uhura began to sing, it was not divinity or peace she sang of.

"Come shout, come sing
of The great Sea King
And the fame that now
Hangs over him
Who once did sweep
Over the vanquished deep,
And drove the world before him...

Where the Sea King rides
Where the Sea King dies
Where the Sea King rides
Where the Sea King dies

His whole earth life
Was a conquering strife
And he lived till his beard grew hoary
And he died at last by
His blood red mast
And now he is lost in glory..."

As the musicians descended once more into the chorus,Uhura, her rich alto increasing the tempo, began to clap intime to the music; within moments, it seemed, a hundred people were clapping, on their feet. I sat very still,attempting to encompass it. This was no ritual of death I understood.

The melody slipped up a half step, and the pace increased. I glanced around surreptitiously in baffled amazement at my former shipmates. They were all on their feet now, as if at attention, as if the wild pagan melody were a solemn dirge. I felt...shell-shocked, as if I had suddenly discovered that the entire universe had transformed itself into antimatter when I was not looking. I was somewhat relieved to exchange a glance with Saavik and observe that she was as nonplused as I.

Then Uhura launched into the final verse, her voice so rich and clear that it might have reached the edges of the campus without amplification.

"Come shout, come sing of
The great Sea King
And ride in the track that he rode in
He sits at the head of the mighty dead,
at the red right hand of Odin..."

Some part of me understood what they had done, somepart of me wished that I could share in it. I did not grudge them their human perversity, that would take a thing ofgrief and make it over into a celebration of life. Jim would have agreed wholeheartedly--as would his Celtic ancestors.

I did not grudge them that. Rather, I admired them, envied them that vigor of spirit, that strength.

But I could not share it.

Up on the platform, behind the musicians and to either side, cadets had begun to appear, bearing huge trays of food and drink. As each reached the piazza, he or she touched a control on the side of the tray, and a cunning system of jointed tubes unfolded, so that each tray became a table. I turned toward the reception hall and saw that the sliding glass wall panels had been opened to the lawn, revealing dozens of similarly laden tables within.

Saavik rescued me. She waited until Sulu was close enough to hear, and then she announced, quite convincingly, that the August heat was becoming too much for her, and would I mind escorting her to sit in the relative coolness and quiet of the arboretum? I agreed, quite convincingly, and offered her my arm as if she were a delicate, fragile thing. As if she had not been born and spent the first ten years of her life on a planet where the average daytime temperature hovered near forty- eight degrees centigrade in the winter.

The greenhouse was lush and shaded and smelled of earth and herbs and the blossoms of a hundred species. It was marginally cooler than the patio outside, but still pleasant. Water flowed and sparkled in a marble fountain; it drew us forward and we followed the stone path toward it. The glass door swung shut behind us, muting the sound.

Saavik lowered herself to sit on the bench which encircled the fountain. After a moment, I joined her. I wanted to thank her, but the words would have been too awkward, would have meant acknowledging too many things at once.

I said instead, "Your eldest will not be a boy for much longer, I think."

She sighed. "I am well aware of that."

"What did Kevan say when you told him David wanted to come today?"

"He did not like the idea. He knows the day is coming soon when a decision will have to be made. But he said nothing. David honored his grandfather; Kevan knows that."

As the years have passed the boy's obsession with Starfleet has only increased; it seems now unlikely that his stepfather or anyone else will be able to dissuade him from it. It is true that he honored his grandfather--but also he is sixteen, and not likely to miss an opportunity to visit Starfleet Academy.

"His test scores are most impressive," I said. "The VSA would be fortunate to have him."

She gave me a sidelong, speculative look. "And of course you mention this only because you wish to further the cause of Federation science."

"Of course," I replied blandly. She was teasing me. If David came to Vulcan to study, he would need family connections, he would need a home to visit occasionally. I would be able to see him more often than once every two years.

"Of course," she mimicked, not fooled. Then she shook her head. "I do not think he will change his mind. He wants a starship, Spock."

I had to wait a moment for the sudden tightness in my throat to subside. "And will you discourage him?"

She was silent for a time. At last she said, "No. I will not. The Fleet was wrong for me--it was not freedom I needed, but a home, and satisfying work, and peace. It took me ten years to learn that. I will not deny him the chance to find his own path. Besides," she sighed, "he is not me, nor is he his father. Perhaps he will find what he needs in Starfleet."

I nodded, satisfied. "Most logical, Saavikam."

She smiled a little at that. It still surprises me when I see her wear that human expression. From the time that she was ten years old until the day that she gave birth to her second child, I never saw her smile. "Yes. Now if I can only make Kevan see it that way."

"I seem to recall that you can be most persuasive."

"True. Also, he is not as stubborn as you."

"I am not stubborn," I replied with exaggerated dignity. The old joke. "It is you who are stubborn."

"Yes." She paused, a long moment in which I was remembering a time many years in the past, an incident in a corridor involving a tricorder, a bath, and an Argelian dragonlily. Then she turned her head, and the look she gave me was teasing and full of shared memory. "And whatever I didn't know about stubbornness, I learned from you."

"Amen to that!"

I looked up, saw that McCoy had come in without us hearing him. "See, Spock? I'm not the only one who thinks you're a cussed mule."

"Indeed, Doctor." I made an effort to rise to the bait in the old manner. "But I do not recall anyone requesting your opinion on the subject."

"Since when has that ever stopped me?"

"Never, in my experience," I conceded. He reached us, and stopped, grinning down at me where I sat. I observed the flush in his face, the slight breathlessness in his voice, and thought that he looked ten years younger than he had two hours ago. The pagan music apparently agreed with him.

"Well then, I rest my case," he said, with the air of a man who has argued and won a complex legal battle. But his eyes were on Saavik. "So, little lady, Captain Sulu tells me the heat was getting to you. Anything you need to tell your old country doctor about?"

Saavik and I exchanged a glance, like guilty children who have been caught out in a fabrication. McCoy might not have known the average temperature on Hellguard, but he was sufficiently versed in vulcanoid physiology to know how extremely unlikely it was that an August day in San Francisco would cause Saavik any discomfort. His concern was genuine, though veiled in studied casualness. He had obviously surmised that her prevarication had been designed to cover some more serious ailment.

"It is nothing, Doctor. I appreciate your concern, but I only wished to rest a moment." Her forest-deep, thoughtful eyes went to me, and then back to McCoy. Then she stood, with a grace which belied her awkward burden. "I am much recovered now. I believe I shall go track down my wayward son, and leave the two of you to enjoy the shade and the quiet."

I got to my feet, stood uncertainly by the fountain. Did she believe I wanted to speak privately with him? That was the last thing I wanted. In the instant before she turned to go, her eyes returned to mine once more, and seemed to ask me to trust her.

Then she was gone, and I found myself alone in the arboretum with Leonard McCoy.

I am ashamed to say, I panicked. I would have gone without a word. As much of an admission as that would have been, still I would have turned my back on him and left without speaking, without hearing what he would say to me. But he was suddenly standing in front of me on the cobblestones, blocking my exit. I had no choice but to face him.

"Doctor--" I began. I have no idea what I would have said.

For he stopped me. He was shaking his head, and I realized that he was laughing. "Oh, for gods' sake, Spock."

His gravelly laughter unsettled me. I did not know how to react. "I do not see what you find humorous," I said, trying for mildly affronted detachment. My voice sounded odd, even to me.

"You , you stubborn Vulcan. You and me." He laughed again, but he looked up at me then, and what I read in his face was not amusement. "Can't we put aside our differences, just this once? Can't we stop jabbing at each other for five minutes?" For an instant I heard my own words of five days previous.

Never had we needed our long-suffering peacemaker more than at that moment.

I did not know what to say. I had expected an attack, had prepared myself for one. I suddenly came to know that I did not want anything gentler from him. Not today. I looked away.

But he would not let it rest. I must have betrayed something with my expression, for his eyes were on me, keen and biting as the desert wind at night. "Why did you come, Spock?"

It was a question I had expected from him--but it was not the sharp, angry demand I had foreseen. His voice was soft, its compassion somehow more dangerous than Marcus' animosity had been. I had to force myself not to flinch from it.

"My reasons are my own."

"Bullshit." Still without rancor.

I moved as if to go. "Doctor, if you will excuse me, I will take my leave of you--" He let me get halfway to the exit before his voice stopped me.

"Did you listen to it?"

I stopped. After only the briefest of hesitations, I turned to face him. He was standing in the middle of the path, his stance casual, his face revealing little. I noticed, incongruously, how very thin, fragile he had become with the passing of the years. "Yes," I said.

"All of it?"

"Yes, Doctor. What is your point?" I could not quite prevent the impatience. He must have heard it in my voice. He misses little. A flicker of something--satisfaction? touched his expression.

"And what did you think?" He moved a step closer. I was stripped before him, and I could not make myself turn. "What did you feel when you listened to it, Spock?" I did not answer. He had to know I would not. But he must have found his answer in my silence. In my very presence. As I stood there, not speaking, not meeting his eyes, I must have answered all his questions.

He was still moving toward me. I felt myself tense, despite my efforts to prevent it. My thoughts were in turmoil. I wanted nothing more than to be gone. But I could not move.

He stopped less than a half-meter away. Reluctantly, I looked up. My apprehension mounted, though I did not know precisely what I feared. I met his eyes. And I spoke, though I did not know where the words came from. They seemed to come of their own volition, and I could not stop them.

"I am sorry."

My voice was barely audible. I did not specify what transgression I asked forgiveness for.

He seemed to understand.

For a long moment, neither of us moved, or spoke. Then, to my infinite surprise, Leonard McCoy reached out and touched my wrist. I was startled into immobility; when I did not immediately pull away, his fingers spread lightly against the back of my hand, a cool, dry pressure.

I am still uncertain about the thing that happened then.

It was unprecedented, as are many things where humans and Vulcans and katras are involved. I do not believe even the doctor himself perceived the strange thing which occurred when he touched me.

My surmise is this: years ago, Leonard McCoy was forced to carry my katra for several weeks. During that time, we shared consciousness. It is possible, I suppose, that some resonance still exists between us...that some part of me still resides in him, and him in me. The fal tor pan is an ancient ritual, steeped in mysticism. It had not been seen on my planet for many centuries when T'Lar and the acolytes attempted it on my behalf. It is possible that the refusion was incomplete--that the connection between myself and Leonard McCoy will never be completely broken.

It is a disturbing thought, and one I have largely refused to contemplate. I still find it difficult to accept.

But I cannot deny what happened.

He touched my hand, a brief contact, fleeting and meant to reassure. He was perhaps consciously reaching out to me. My own shields were admittedly uncertain. I felt the faint brush of his thoughts, and they were full of sorrow, and compassion, and grief. Some part of me reacted, instinctively, to the brief contact. Some part of me opened to him, and I felt the automatic lowering of a shield I had not known I held, a reflexive response I could not prevent.

And something awakened in me from a long, sheltered hibernation.

I sensed, in that instant, the thing I had not sensed five days before, or in any moment since. Felt it in a place within me which had not been touched for more than a decade.

I felt the echo of Jim Kirk's mind, and the absence of it.

. . .

I can feel it even now. A great grey nothing at the heart of the world, a darkness like a hard dead thing pressing at the back of my eyes.

Perhaps I shall never feel anything else.

* * *

I do not know how long we stood like that. I must have swayed. I became aware that he was supporting me with a hand at my elbow, looking at me with concern. Perhaps he said my name. I pulled away from him and he let me go. I stood there among the philodendrons, attempting normalcy and aware that my face was betraying me. I was shivering, though the greenhouse was warm. He was still trying to reach out to me. I backed away, unwilling to let him touch me again.

"Are you all right?"

I must have given something approaching an acceptable response, for he ceased trying to put his hands on me. I stood very still, a meter of space between us now. It was an insufficient distance, but I did not want to turn and walk away from him; I did not want him to see my unsteadiness.

He was watching me, eyes narrowed. I made myself respond. "It is nothing." I was encouraged to find that my voice did not waver. "Do not be concerned."

"Spock...you two were friends for more than thirty years. It's all right to let yourself grieve a little, you know. You can't just--"

"Doctor." I did not wish to hear any more. "Leonard, please."

I think perhaps he knew, then, what I did not. Perhaps he heard it in my voice. Perhaps my face did indeed betray me. In any case, it was not I who left, but McCoy. He said only, "You know where I'll be." And then he turned abruptly and moved past me, through the doors and out into the brightness and noise of the piazza.

No sooner did the glass doors close behind him than the last of my control deserted me, and I did a thing which astonished me, and shames me still. Perhaps he knew. If so, his capacity for compassion is even greater than I suspected.

If he saw it coming, I did not; the first tears which welled forth surprised me, shocked me utterly.

. . .

Hubris. Arrogance. I have been accused of these things more than once over the years, by allies and enemies alike. Not least of all by James Kirk. I have learned to accept the possibility that there may be some substance to these accusations.

And yet I have perhaps displayed no greater arrogance in my life than the astonishment I felt at my own weeping.

Had I thought I could not succumb to such a human weakness? By what conceit had I made that assumption? Had I believed I could not grieve?

I grieved. That day I felt his absence in my mind, and believed that he was dead, and I grieved for him, standing like an arrogant fool among the shrubs and vines, the tears running out of me and falling on the smooth stones.

* * *

I left Earth that afternoon, alone, and did not speak to any of them again beyond the phrases necessary for my departure.

I have not been able to face T'Sharen. I arrived home late last night and so far have managed to avoid her. I am certain that she will see me and know what I am, that my damning humanity will be somehow visible.

Now I know what it is to feel that wrenching loss of control; now I know that I can lose control.

No. Perhaps it is more than that. Further evidence of my weakness.

Perhaps I cannot bear to face what I shall feel when I see her.

Not her fault. None of it was her fault. She never asked of me what I gave freely; she never would have burdened me with her secrets, if I had not forced them out of her. She did not have to save my life, all those years ago, did not ever ask me to choose. And yet choices were made, and made by me, and now too late I understand the cost--and find I cannot face the woman I married, for fear of what I will find in my thoughts.

I am thinking of James Kirk and Carol Marcus, who loved each other once and lost a son and found that, in the end, forgiveness of one another was more than either of them could give.

The accounting of my trespasses in these dark days shall be grave indeed.

. . .

Tonight's dream was only one more demonstration of my unVulcanness.

I have heard it said, on more than one occasion, that Vulcans do not dream. Perhaps this is another of my culture's oblique euphemisms, a generations-deep fiction maintained for the purpose of shielding the Vulcan heart from curious eyes. I have perpetuated it myself. Perhaps there is even a measure of truth in the assertion. It is possible that Vulcans do experience the state of dreaming, but simply do not retain the memory of it upon waking. No Vulcan has ever spoken to me--or to another in my hearing--of any subconscious imagery experienced during the hours before dawn. Certainly I have never spoken of my own dark nocturnal reveries to anyone, Vulcan or otherwise.

Perhaps Vulcans do not dream. But I do.

This is the dream I had tonight.

* * *

I am standing in a place of dust, and sand, and there are stars.

It is Seleya. I know this instinctively, though the night is dark and I cannot make out the silhouette of the Sentinel. I see the dim shapes of the stone pillars, the ancient ring of stones, and I know I am at Gol, the place of Kolinahr. The sky holds only stars; T'Kuht has set, and it will be many hours yet before sunrise.

When the dawn comes, T'Sai will stand before me. She will touch my thoughts, and then she will speak the words which once cast me adrift: Your answer lies elsewhere.

I cannot know this. It has not yet happened.

I understand that I am dreaming.

T'Sai's words are inevitable. But in this time and place, they cannot harm me. That rejection is both hours away, and years in the past. In either case, I am insulated from it by Time.

The wind moans through a chimney of rock, whipping my hair into my eyes. It is colder than I remember. The stones are taller than I remember, monoliths, reaching for a distant sky.

I weigh the significance of this place, this time, and come to an understanding; I have lived these hours before. I mark the outline of the stones and turn to the east, waiting for dawn, and what I know it will bring.

It was here, more than a quarter of a century ago, a few hours from now, that I felt the touch of his mind as the sun came up in my eyes. A moment only, that contact--but his need communicated itself, and his fear, and I could no more fail to answer it than I could fail to breathe. Now I am standing again in this place, knowing that when the sun comes, I will feel his thoughts. My own need has communicated this dream to me.

And even though I know it is a dream, even though I know it is a weakness, I will stay here and wait with my face turned toward the east and hope not to wake.

But something is wrong.

It is the wind. There was a breeze, that morning at Gol, cool and dry and smelling of the desert. But this wind is cold, the sand stinging my face. I close my eyes and try to make it be the same, will it to be, but to no avail.

And because this is a dream I cannot prevent myself from opening my eyes, from turning back to the ring of stones, turning away from the still-dark eastern sky. As much as I wish it otherwise, I cannot prevent it. The fabric of dream twists around me, mocking me. I am among the stones, then, seeking shelter from the cold and the biting sand.

A moment later, there is a slackening of the wind from the east, and in the quiet, I look up at the stars.

They too, are wrong.

I begin to know then, though what I know I do not wish to know, and so the truth does not reach me. Not yet. I only stand among the stones, my head tilted back, trying to make sense of this false sky. But no matter how long I stand there, the essential thing does not change.

These are no stars seen from Gol, or indeed, from anywhere on Vulcan.

The wind is still blowing, for I can hear it, fluting in the high crevices, keening mournfully all around me. But I cannot feel it now. I can only stand, not moving. The sky is dark and filled with the wrong stars, and T'Kuht has never shone there.

I am walking, then, the sand slipping under my feet, the wind gusting around me. There is a stone pillar in front of me. I walk past it, out of the ancient ring, and walk, and still I walk, and then there is the stone again, in front of me, which is impossible. I cannot seem to escape the ring. It follows me, entraps me, goes on forever. I keep walking.

And then the stones change shape in the shadows, eddies of blowing dust and sand forming them into new contours. These shapes unsettle me, for no reason I can understand. I stop, and look about, squinting against the wind, and see that they do, indeed, go on forever, stretching to the horizon in all directions. The ring of stones goes on forever.

No, not a ring of stones.

A ring of stone.

In the dream, I am more frightened than I have ever been in waking life.

I turn then, helpless in the grip of dream, and see the thing I would not permit myself to see. It is standing there, waiting, as I must have known it would be. The wind stills.

"Why?" I cry out. And then I wish to unsay the word, for I am not certain I want to know the answer.

"A QUESTION," says the ring of stone. For this is what it has been waiting for, millennia and millennia of waiting, fulfilling its function. I wonder, fleetingly and not for the first time, if it can understand the grief it has wrought. But then it is shifting, changing, and in the mist of its center I can see images. I cannot look away from them.

"No," I say, but I look anyway. I am compelled.

I am a scientist. I know what is coming. I know I cannot, must not, will not succumb to this temptation. Everything in me insists that there can be no choice, no choice at all. And still I cannot tear my gaze away.

Images. Brightness and motion and color, swirling into familiar shapes. A thousand moments, a lifetime condensed, choices made and actions taken. I know these people, these places. I know the choices I made. I will not take them back. The past cannot be changed; every voice of logic and reason and science within me tells me this is so. I am riveted to the flowing patterns, and I cannot make myself turn.

And then, in the mist, I see him. I know this moment, though I was not there. I know it and I understand what choice is being given to me. He is at the control panel. His eyes are shining, because he knows that he is making a difference. He is saving the Enterprise, even if it is not his Enterprise. This time he will succeed.

"No," I hear myself say. But I take a step forward.

"MANY JOURNEYS ARE POSSIBLE."

He slides the last diamond deflector chip into place, acting in the face of destiny and risk and Death, his old adversary. He is smiling.

I am almost out of time. Again, I refuse. "No."

But I hear the desperation when I say it.

I take another step. If I reached out, I could touch him. I could save him, prevent what is to come. All I need do is reach out, pull him through to me, and history will remain unchanged, and he will be safe. Logic, inescapable.

Almost, I can believe it.

My hands have lifted, though I have not made any conscious decision.

"LET ME BE YOUR GATEWAY."

One step, and I may live again.

But that cannot be.

I make the only answer I can make, the one word breaking in my tortured throat like glass.

"NO!"

My voice echoes off the stone; the echo swallows me up.

I am bleeding. My blood runs out of me with the word, and I am only emptiness. I am consumed.

And then I wake.

. . .

The difficulty being, of course, that it is not a tactical impossibility.

I have the clearance. Starfleet never suspended my Intel rating. My connection to the Embassy would probably enable me to hire a small craft into the system of the Guardian, or near it. But even if I could not manage it legally, there are other ways, for a man of my resources.

I do not doubt that I could do it.

The voice within which assures me of this also reminds me, as if I needed to be reminded, that I once broke Federation law, risked death and Jim's career to give Captain Pike a chance at life. Can I do less, give less, risk less--now?

I recognize this traitorous voice for what it is. I recognize the utter impossibility of such an act. It would go against everything I believe, as a scientist, as a Vulcan, as a creature of honor. But still I cannot quite erase the dream image from my mind--and it is that image which drove me from sleep tonight, and keeps me from it. Even my weeping did not shock me as deeply as does this failure to master my own thoughts.

T'Kuht has set, as in my dream, and still I feel him gone and think, I could do it. It is not a tactical impossibility.

. . .

I will not do it, of course. I am what I am; I cannot change. The training runs too deep in me, and cannot be undone. Not even for him.

And that is a grief I will endure for the rest of my life.

. . .

Shara... I did not hear you come in.

Spock, I would speak with you.

I am sorry, but I am rather busy at the moment--

Busy? Doing what? Torturing yourself with things you can do nothing to change?

. . .

Leave me, my wife.

No. I will not leave you alone with this any longer. My husband, what are you doing to yourself? What purgatory have you made for yourself up here in this dark room?

I prefer it dark. Please, I wish to be alone.

Will you not even speak to me?

I cannot.

Spock, I am concerned. You have eaten nothing, and barely slept in over a week. Have you not yet suffered enough for his sake?

Spock?

Please go.

Where should I go, my husband, if not to you when you are in need?

You cannot blame yourself. Surely you cannot be blaming yourself--

Who, then? Who shall bear the punishment for this, if not I?

'All that is borne we shall bear together.' I said that once. Will you not let me help to bear this grief? He would not want have wanted this from you, Spock.

What would you know of it?

. . .

Forgive me, Shara. I am not myself. Please, go. Let me retain some dignity, at least. You cannot help me. Noone can help me.

I do not understand why you will not permit me to share this burden.

No. You do not understand. You never did.

Is that what you believe?

That I never saw, never knew, never understood the truth of what he was to you?

I warn you not to speak of things which do not concern you.

Did you think I could not see the light which burned in you each time you looked at him?

You will be silent!

Sooner could I look full into the sky at noon and fail to see the sun! Did you really think me so blind, Spock? I saw. I knew. From the beginning I understood. From the first time I heard you speak his name. Why do you think I tried for so many years to set you free?

You saw. You knew... but I did not. Until this moment, I did not.

You look at me as if I had betrayed you.

Silence can be a betrayal, Shara. No one knows that better than I.

Son of Sarek, I have never before known you to be unjust. What name shall I give to the accusation I see now in your eyes?

Why did you never speak to me of this?

Oh, Spock--do not ask me that.

How can you ask me that? The answer stands before me in this very room. Did I not have the right? Did you not give me the right, when you made me your wife? Was there to be nothing of you which might be mine alone, no part of you he could not touch?

Can you not see why, Spock? Even he could see it. Even he.

Shara, please. Leave me. I cannot--I do not think that I can bear this.

You cannot bear--! I am the one who lived with being second choice for twenty-six years!

I beg you.

You look at me as if I caused his death with my own hands! The choices were all your own. I never asked you to take pity on me.

Is that what you believe? That I married you because I pitied you?

Didn't you?

It was never pity!

Wasn't it, Spock? Some sense of obligation then. Some illusion of Vulcan honor. A life for a life, wasn't that the thinking? I see you do not deny it. How could you think that I could see you with him and not understand how it was?

You are mistaken, T'Sharen. You understood nothing. Nothing!

. . .

No more than I did.

Kroykah!

All right, Spock. All right. I will go, and leave you alone with your hypocrisy and your foolish guilt. Perhaps you are right.

Perhaps I cannot help you after all.

Oh father, what have I done? Was it from you I learned this emptiness, this cold absence of feeling? Such chill darkness to contain only one bright burning ember of heat...

The woman I married is a stranger, and my life a lie.

Computer, resume--

Ah. The evidence of my dissolution is at hand; I have unknowingly recorded it for all posterity.

No matter. These taped admissions shall be witnessed by none but myself, and I know full well the impotency of revelations come too late.

In trying not to choose, not to risk myself, my soul, my Vulcan honor--I have lost everything.

* * *

I had not seen him in a year; we had been pushing each other away for many years before that. In the end we hardly spoke of anything that mattered. Why then should his death weigh on me as nothing ever has--why then should I have wept for him, when I have not wept in my lifetime? Why do I sit in this room night after night, unable to resist the compulsion to speak of these things to a computer?

I understand, at last, what McCoy was trying to tell me by sending me that record tape. Finally, finally, I understand what he meant for me to hear.

He misses little.

I thought that Leonard McCoy meant to punish me. I believed that he was angry with me...that he wished for me to listen to the voice on the tape and feel remorse for whatever failings he perceived in me. Now I see that what he intended me to hear was something else entirely.

'What did you feel when you listened to it, Spock?' he asked, and I did not answer him. My tears were my answer. He was kind enough to spare me the indignity of an audience, but he knew. He knew, and now I see with perfect clarity what he was trying to tell me, what he meant for me to hear, what he meant for me to know.

And I perceive that my capacity for arrogance is greater than James Kirk or anyone else could have imagined.

* * *

I am a Vulcan. I have studied the disciplines of Kolinahr. I am in control of my emotions.

I am in control of my emotions.

How many years did we bear it in silence, he and I, before it became too much to bear and began to drive us apart?

It was impossible, of course. His death does not change that. It was always impossible, and always would have been. Because of what we were, because of the choices that we made, that silence would never, could never be broken.

But nevertheless, someone did hear all those things we did not say, over the years. And Leonard McCoy was the one who recognized, in spite of our elaborately constructed defenses, the truth we concealed even from each other. How cruel a thing to learn that he was not the only one who--knew.

Why didn't I?

It was the single greatest truth of my life, and I never let myself see it.

When did I first begin to feel something more than friendship for my captain? And how long did I suppress the knowledge of my own forbidden yearnings before I began to shut him out? Before I left?

What would I have done, had I known that he, too-- suppressed?

. . .

These are questions I cannot answer. He is gone, and I will never know what I might have done, had I been other than what my training and my nature made me. My father would say it is illogical to dwell on that which cannot be changed.

But he would also understand, too well.

After all, he married a human.

* * *

A year ago, the last time I saw him.

I was here, at the desk, and there was a faint step on the woven mat in the corridor outside. Something about it made me pause, made me turn toward the door. And he was there, in the doorway, and in that first instant I understood that somehow, without my permission, time had gotten away from me.

I had not seen him in eight months; not since the day the Enterprise returned from Khitomer. There had been a few message tapes. But it was a habit we were not accustomed to, and those few had been brief, and awkward, and said little of importance. I had not answered his most recent communication. He had asked me to come to Earth the following month; I could not tell him that I would be on ch'Rihan, and could not lie to him, and so I sent no reply.

He stopped in the doorway and smiled, and in the smile I saw myself as he must have seen me before I turned, my brow furrowed in concentration, surrounded by my computers, posture stiff from too many hours of reading from the screen. Then he stepped over the threshold.

"Hello, old friend."

"Jim." I stood up, came around the desk. "I am...very pleased to see you."

"Same goes for me."

He said it lightly, but I glimpsed a suspicious shimmer in his eyes before he moved to the window. My unguarded greeting had surprised him.

I watched him for a moment; he did not immediately speak. "You are always welcome, of course," I began. "But I was not expecting..."

He turned on me then, his face hard and set in bitter lines. "No, I'm sure you weren't."

"Jim?" I realized, to my chagrin, that I had taken a step backward in the face of his unexpected animosity.

He seemed to struggle with himself; when he spoke again, his tone was gentler, though his eyes were angry still. "Damnit, Spock. Do you think I don't know you well enough to know what you're up to?"

It was the old tone, commander to subordinate. Of course it was only force of habit--but it provoked me, nonetheless. I kept my face still, absolutely still. This time he would not goad me into an emotional display; I was strong enough to resist him. "I do not comprehend your meaning, Captain."

I used the title reflexively, without thinking. It had always been my way of keeping distance between us, of maintaining a discreet barrier of formality. Belatedly, I realized that it might wound him, to be reminded that he would never again captain a starship. I saw the hurt flare in his eyes for a fraction of an instant.

"The hell you don't."

I tried for innocent misunderstanding. "I am currently engaged in a study with Georges Mordreaux on temporal singularity mechanics. I fail to see--"

"Oh, cut it out, Spock. I know you're going back there." His tone was weary, as if this was an argument he did not think he could bear to have again. He began to pace, a meter from where I stood in front of the desk. "Don't pretend you're not."

I could not think of anything to say.

He turned, paused in his pacing. Looked at me. "Were you going to tell me?"

"No," I said, the truth.

He finished his circuit toward the window and stopped there again. After a moment, he sank into the carved armchair and rested his hands on the stylized sehlat paws. He looked old...not like himself at all. I was disturbed by that. "Are you planning to come back?" he asked at last, his voice small.

Only honesty would serve. "If I can."

His jaw hardened. "I'll never understand what you hope to accomplish. What the hell do you think you owe those people, anyway? If they catch you, they'll torture and kill both of you --you know that! Even Saavik says--" He broke off, having said more than he meant to.

"Saavik does not understand. Nor do you."

His eyes turned from the window, lifted to mine. "Then explain it to me!"

If it were only myself, I would have explained long ago. But there were other reasons which demanded my silence. And, if the truth be known, this was an argument I wearied of. Saavik, Jim, my father...I was tired of fighting them all. I shook my head. "It does not concern you."

He stood up angrily, resumed pacing, and I retreated behind the desk.

"Oh, and I suppose when you just don't come back from one of these crazy trips, that won't concern me, either?" His voice had risen. "Tell me, Spock, does T'Sharen have any idea what the Romulan government would do if they found out Spock of Vulcan was in their grasp, right under their very noses? Does that matter to her for one second? Or does she believe that no price is too much to pay, if it means that Surak's honor is satisfied?"

I should have known, then, that he was only afraid for my safety, that his fear was making him say things he did not mean. I should have recognized his worry, the hurt he felt that I would have gone without telling him. But I had had enough of defending them to one another. And, I must admit--my guilt over my failure to answer his communique made me defensive. It had been the coward's way, and I knew it. "T'Sharen and I are in complete agreement," I said, "and you will not question her motives."

My tone made him recoil almost imperceptibly; I saw his eyes widen, then narrow. "You'll never learn, will you, Spock?"

I stiffened. "What would you have me learn--suspicion? Distrust? Fear for my own safety, when there is so much to gain? The James Kirk I once knew never feared personal risk." I saw my words strike home, perhaps harder than I intended them to. I saw him draw a breath, sharply.

I felt a moment of despair, keen and fleeting. I had not seen him in eight months and all we could do was wound each other. Surely he knew that I would have explained everything to him years ago, if it were only my own secrets I kept?

And no truth or lie shall rend us one from the other...

He lashed out. "You'll never learn to trust me! Everyone else in the galaxy, you'll take at their word. You trusted Valeris, and she almost got us both killed, and Bones into the bargain. You trusted the Klingons, and look where that got us." He paused, and averted his face, pacing again. "But me--you think I'm old, that I've lost my gut instinct. I'm telling you, Spock, you're risking your lives for nothing! The Romulans will never trust anyone who isn't a Romulan."

The heat rose in my voice despite my best efforts to prevent it. "You speak of trust. When will you learn to trust me?"

"I'll trust you when you learn some goddamned sense!" He flung his hands up, exasperated; still he kept his voice low, so that the rest of the household would not hear. "How many times over the years have you leaped before you looked, Spock? I'm not around to watch out for you these days, you know."

"And you are the one to be lecturing me about caution?"

The unfairness of that was too much. How many years had I spent protecting this man from himself? How many times had I stayed behind because he ordered me to, while he risked himself again and again? I heard the memory of all those times in my voice and drew a breath, reaching for Vulcan calm. Those days were past, or so I thought. "You do not command me any more," I said, before I could think better of it.

"No, you're right. I don't." He was suddenly pale. "But I thought friendship counted for something." He turned his back on me; I saw, in the moment before he turned, how deeply I had driven my point home, and at what cost.

...all that is borne we shall bear together....

I said his name, but my voice betrayed me; it came out a hoarse whisper, and he did not hear.

"I was wrong to come here," he said at last. "I'm sorry." And then he was moving toward the door. Impotent, I watched him go.

But on the threshold, he paused.

"I do trust you, you know," he said. His eyes met mine in open supplication. "I always have. You know that, don't you?" He spread his hands, as if appealing to me to believe him.

I did, of course. But it was not that kind of trust I had asked for. I admit it, now, for there is no one to hear me--I was angry with him for doubting my judgment. We had, for too long, been one another's balance in matters of decision; the habit of essential opposition was too deeply ingrained in us. Just this once, I wanted him to concede to me without argument, respect my ability to make choices for myself. Just this once, I did not want to perform the habitual dance of wills.

I was angry, I admit that now. There was a part of me which considered his appeal a manipulation, of a sort. It would not have been the first time he had used our personal relationship to win an argument. And so I only stood, armored behind my desk, and did not answer him.

...and I shall guard thy life as my own, forever.

But we never swore thus, he and I. And if there is blame to be assigned for that it must be mine; if a reckoning was required then surely he made it in the engine room of that fledgling ship. Though in the end it is I who will pay the cost.

He nodded, finally, once. Perhaps accepting. His hands fell to his sides. "All right, Spock. I won't try to change your mind again." He swallowed; the tension in him eased, and for a moment I thought he would come back into the room, would stay. But he said only, "Forgive me."

In another moment he was gone.

I did not hear that day what he was really trying to tell me...which was, of course, only that he was concerned for me. That he had not been able to face the thought that something might happen to me, when he might have been able to stop it. That he--missed me. Not that day or in any of the weeks which followed did I hear anything beyond the stubbornness, the misunderstanding. But now... I hear you, Jim. I hear you.

That was the last time.

. . .

Daybreak, now. How many days? I cannot tell and do not care, and do not know if I ever shall.

'Don't wait too long, Spock. Promise me.' He said that once. But I never did promise. Never did tell him the one certainty that ran deeper than all the silences, all the omissions, all the distances between us. Never did let myself see it.

It was you, Jim, I would say, if he could hear.

It always was.

There is nothing left to me of Vulcan control--and what of that? The truth is that I scarcely care any more if all the galaxy knows my weakness. It seems of little consequence, next to the knowledge that I have been blind for three decades, and three times a fool. What should I care for the pristine sanctity of this final, bitter truth--a truth it took a mistress of deception to reveal to me--when the one who should have heard it never will?

As in my dream, I long to change the fabric of what has gone before, bend the past to my will. As in my dream, all my wishing will not make it so. Will not change the memory of him turning to go, of me letting him. I will not ever say the words which will make him come back to me, and he will not ever hear them.

I believe you. I trust you. I always wanted to tell you the truth.

. . .

Forgive me.

* * *

[stardate 48672.3 ...recording]

I have done what I said I would never do; I have listened to it, beginning to end, as I believed I never would.

It was more difficult than I would have imagined.

Even after all these years, I found it hard to hear those truths. To hear his voice--and the naked grief in my own. Even after all these years, the sound of his voice draws blood from my heart I did not know such a stone could shed.

Years? Decades. Eight of them. And if I thought myself an old man then... well, then I did not know the meaning of the word. Now I know. Now I am empty, a worn husk with nothing left to give but the regret that bleeds slowly from that long-ago wound.

What I am contemplating is surely madness.

The shadows grow longer, reaching their long fingers down the wall, across the stone floor, halfway up the front of my desk. Somewhere in the house I can hear the wind, sighing down the long hallways. I must have left a window open--a disturbing oversight. Never have I been so careless.

The wind. An empty sound in an empty house. No one has lived here since my father died. Not even Perrin. I would have let her stay--surely she knew that. But the groundskeeper tells me that she has not been here since Sarek's death. It is my house now, and I suppose that is too grating a thing for her to bear.

She went to the city more than two years ago now, the groundskeeper tells me. She hired him to keep the rose gardens.

There are a number of these gardens on the property. The formal courtyard in the east wing, and the conservatory. The terraces of shrub roses. The wild roses growing along the orchard wall.

'So many flowers, in this desert climate?' T'Sharen asked once. It was the morning after our wedding. I explained that my mother had been most determined. Amanda pampered and coaxed and cross-bred with desert Earth-roses for years--and my mother, determined, was not a woman to be dismissed lightly. She did eventually coax the plants to grow. In time, even to thrive.

After she died, I found it logical that I should be the one to keep the plants alive and blooming. Sarek pretended not to notice this, though once or twice I came upon him unexpectedly, walking slowly between the trellises which line the slope behind the house. Those grew from the first clippings Amanda brought with her from Earth.

Of course, the wild roses I planted later.

I can smell them now, in the evening breeze coming up from the valley. It rises to my window from the base of the hill, where the ancient, shallow steps lead to a wall of crumbling brick. The wall is more ancient still, choked with gnarled vines heavy with age, laden with m'nai fruit.

Each night for eighty years the breeze has risen off the plain, as the heat of the day rises off the sand and meets the cooling currents descending from the mountain. Each night that breeze has carried to my window the wild, sweet fragrance of those dusky pink blooms I planted so many years ago.

It is the scent of memory.

I left this house and that familiar perfume behind nearly three years ago, in answer to Pardek's summons. On ch'Rihan, without that daily reminder, I was surprised to find that I sometimes went days or weeks without thinking of him. Now, returning, I find the scent so welcome and so sorely missed that I long to go down to the orchard wall and lie among the thorns. Yes. Let me bleed, if it means that I might breathe great lungfuls of that memory. Let that redolence drive all thought from me, so I will not have to think about what I learned today.

. . .

Three years now, since Shara's death.

She left me, finally, after that day in my study when she made me see the truth. After that day we were wife and husband in name only. Save for absolute necessity, onceevery seven years, she did not set foot in this house again.

I tried to give her what I could, even if it was only my presence on those perilous forays across the neutral zone.

Did she ever forgive me, for failing to be what she needed? I do not know. I do not know if she ever knew that I forgave her the same failure. Three years ago she died, and I mourned her here, on the lands of my ancestors, not even a body to commit to the sand, her katra lost forever.

. . .

It began to go wrong some months before that, when the Tal Shiar operative Sela tried and failed to manipulate the Klingon succession.

I told Shara it was a mistake to go. In the wake of that resounding failure on the Klingon homeworld, conditions on ch'Rihan could only have deteriorated. 'That is why we must go,' she said to me, calm in her certainty. 'Never have the seheikk'he needed us more.'

She was right, of course. And so she went, and I with her, as it had been so many times before. But being right did not save her, when desperation and fear drove an unknown informant to reveal the location of our encampment.

The soldiers raided our camp at dawn.

I have seen tapes of Tal Shiar interrogations. I have seen victims of these techniques. I cannot--even after three years, I cannot think of her like that. Cannot think of my fearless, untouchable, unbreachable Shara broken thus. Three years has not been nearly long enough to forget.

With the help of a child, a boy named D'Tan, I and two other Vulcans managed to elude capture and reach the ship. The others had to physically restrain me. To stay was suicide, they told me. Illogical to throw our lives away, when there could be no hope of rescue for the woman I had called my wife for over a century.

We fled. I came home to Vulcan, alone, believing that I would never cross the neutral zone again.

When Pardek contacted me some two months later, my first response was disbelief--and something too much like unreasoning anger. Had I not given enough? Hadn't she?

It was that thought which stopped me, made me consider carefully what choice the Romulan senator offered me. T'Sharen had given her life in the attempt to bring an end to the military oppression of the Rihannsu people. To bring unification to the children of Surak and the children of S'task. I had been unable to save her, but perhaps I could still preserve her hopes for peace and freedom. Perhaps I could accomplish what she had sought all her life.

Perhaps by going I could make some recompense for failing her, so long ago.

And so I went. In her name and in her memory, I wrapped up my affairs as I had so many times before, and departed for Romulus, this time alone.

. . .

In hindsight, I can logically assume that Pardek was at least partially responsible for the photograph that betrayed me.

More than a century of secrecy. In all, I crossed the neutral zone twenty-three times--only to be betrayed, at the last, by a poor resolution security camera on the street, and a grainy print which found its way into the wrong hands.

Was it an experiment? A test of Federation intelligence capabilities? I can never be certain. In any case, the result was the heavy-handed interference of Starfleet, the unwelcome meddling of one Jean-Luc Picard.

. . .

Picard. Yes. It seems the man is my personal demon, and I cannot escape him. He left for Earth eleven hours ago, and still the echo of his words fills the house, allowing me no peace.

* * *

"Nothing is real." -John Lennon

* * *

I was working in the orchard when he came. Can it only have been this morning?

It was early, the sun still low in the sky. I heard a sound behind me, a soft tread on the dry earth. I turned, brushing sap and dirt from my hands and clothing, and saw him coming through the gate.

Unexpected, this visitor. I was not certain I wished to speak with him. Had he come to offer me some kind of apology, for what transpired two years before?

He, perhaps better than anyone, might understand the final futility of all I had attempted in the name of unification. I had been so self-important in my certainty. 'I will not be coming with you,' I said then, not understanding that in two years the Founders would come and make all our years of secrecy and risk superfluous. In the end it was not the tenets of Surak, but merely a stronger and more ruthless enemy that obliterated the Tal Shiar. I should be thankful, I thought this morning for the hundredth time, that two hundred years of oppression are over. But all I could think of, all I have been able to think of, is Shara, and the blood that has been spilled uselessly in the name of unification.

I did not wish to face his pity.

But as he drew near, I read the drawn weariness in his face, the bleak shadow of grief in his eyes; and I understood that my own losses were not what had brought this man to my door.

I faced him, cloaked in Vulcan calm. "Good morning, Captain. May I be of some assistance?"

The expression which touched his eyes momentarily looked like uncertainty, or wariness. Was he afraid of me? He cleared his throat. "I wonder, Ambassador, if you might be so good as to sit with me for a while. You see, I have a rather lengthy and... exceedingly implausible story to tell you." He shaded his eyes against the glare. "Do you think we might speak for a moment? Somewhere out of the sun?"

Ambassador. It rang false, grating painfully on nerves that were still too raw. I had called myself Ambassador once, and believed that I could make a difference in the unfolding of the universe. Arrogance again; it has always been my Achilles heel.

"Would not a subspace communication have sufficed?"

"Not for this," he said gravely.

Inside, I led him to a sitting room at the west end of the great hall. It was only when I saw the fine layer of red dust coating the door that I realized I had not entered that room in three years.

I ignored the evidence of my own apathy, and showed him into the room. I indicated the large, splay-footed arm chair near the center of the room, but he only declined with a shake of his head. I received the distinct impression that he wished to be able to make a quick exit, if necessary.

His silent wariness was a warning, that whatever he had come to say, it would be unpleasant. He gazed at me with that hawk- stare and said nothing, as if he was searching for the words to tell me something I very much did not wish to hear.

Premonition made my hands unsteady; I locked them together behind me. I tried to make my voice unconcerned. "This thing you have come to say to me must be quite remarkable indeed. I have never known you to lack facility with words, Picard."

"Then you haven't heard, I take it."

"Heard?"

I had not watched the news or spoken to another living soul in days. It has been weeks since I returned from ch'Rihan, and I am still having difficulty... adjusting.

"About Veridian III. The Enterprise."

"I have heard no news."

This seemed to distress him. Obviously, in cutting myself off from the rest of the galaxy, I had missed something of note-- and he had expected me to know the reason for his visit. He grimaced, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "I don't know where to start that would make this any easier to hear."

I was unable to entirely control my impatience. "I suggest at the beginning."

He sighed, and searched my face, for what, I cannot guess. "The Enterprise went down a week ago," he said, finally, flatly. "Destroyed. On a planet called Veridian III."

I stared at him, for a moment so startled that I forgot to guard my expression. An entire ship--lost? "The crew?" I asked, despite the promise I had made that nothing he could say would touch me.

"We lost seventeen. It was Lursa and B'Etor Duras," he said, answering the question I had not asked. His mouth curled bitterly. "And they had help." He shook his head, once, sharply. "But that is not what I came to tell you. Something else. Something quite... remarkable happened to me there. I did not want you to hear it through official channels."

"Official channels," I repeated in disbelief, the bitterness readily apparent. "Do you think me privy to such, now? After what occurred with Pardek? After your subsequent report to Starfleet? I am fortunate I was not arrested the instant I set foot on Federation soil." I heard the raw edges in my voice; the years of living in hiding have cost me more than I realized.

But his surprise was genuine. "That was two years ago. Surely, after your successes on Romulus the Diplomatic Corps has requested your return..."

I could scarcely credit his naivete. "Successes, Picard? Whatever unity ch'Rihan may have achieved from the events of the past year, whatever freedom the seheikk'he have gained, it was none of my doing."

"Is that why you left Romulus? Do you honestly think that you didn't make a difference? I saw how those people looked up to you."

"T'Sharen and I tried for the better part of both our lives to make a difference. The changeling Founders accomplished in less than a year what we could not in a century." I could not hold to his wide-eyed, suddenly comprehending gaze, and turned away. "Thanks to the shape-changers, the Tal Shiar are no more. I left Romulus because my presence was no longer necessary."

"The Romulan people still need help," he protested. "Guidance--"

I did not need to be lectured in responsibility, most especially not by Jean-Luc Picard. I cut him off. "Have I not given enough? There is a limit to any man's resources. Even mine."

My back was to him when I said that, and he did not answer. But I could feel his disapproval, tangible on the back of my neck.

I closed my eyes, weary of sparring with him. "Captain, you did not come so far to make commentary on my careerchoices. What is it that you wish to tell me?"

The room grew so still that I could hear him swallow, even across the distance separating us.

And at last, he began to tell me why he had come.

With rehearsed precision, he spoke of an El-Aurian named Tolian Soran, who had attempted to destroy a world, a sun. He spoke of Soran's collusion with the Duras sisters, and how one man had brought down a starship.

He told me that Soran was a passenger aboard the Lakul eighty years ago. Then he began to pace, nervously, back and forth before me. As if he were... delaying. As if he wanted to plead for forgiveness, to beg absolution. To flee. His head was bowed stiffly, as if for a blow.

I was aware of some still-unspoken truth in the room. "Captain Picard, this deliberately cryptic vagueness grows tiresome. What do you wish to say to me?"

He glanced at me sidelong. "How much do you know of the energy ribbon which destroyed the Lakul?"

This quite astonished me. "I... know something of the anomaly." It was an understatement, of course.

"Were you aware that the same energy ribbon recently passed within a few light years of the Veridian system?"

"I was not."

"It did. At least in this reality." Before I could speak, Picard plunged ahead. "What I am trying to tell you is that Tolian Soran was trying to use the explosion of the Veridian star to divert that energy distortion."

"For what purpose?"

"He wanted to bring the ribbon to a particular point in space, so that he could get inside it."

"Impossible," I stated flatly. Automatically.

"No," Picard said, and held my gaze. "Not impossible. Difficult, yes, but not impossible. He'd done it once before, eighty years ago. On the Lakul. But taking a ship was too risky--the gravimetric forces surrounding the ribbon can tear a ship apart in seconds. He was so determined to get back to the Nexus that he was willing to destroy a star before he'd risk failure."

I felt a sinking sensation somewhere, simultaneously distant and disturbing. "The 'nexus?'" I heard myself say.

He made an impatient gesture. "That's the name Guinan gave to it. A member of my crew--a friend. She, too, was on the Lakul. That place exists, Spock. I know. I've been there."

I stared at him for long seconds. I could not think. His eyes grew wide, as if alarmed by what he saw in my face. There was a rushing sound, suddenly, and my equilibrium faltered.

I moved, then, because I could not stand still any longer. The impulse I quickly suppressed into a controlled pacing. "You are speaking nonsense, Picard. It is a rogue singularity of a uniquely violent nature. No being could survive it." My throat grew tight, and I forced down the thought which tried to show itself to me. My voice turned to a hoarse whisper. "It simply cannot be."

Picard stepped in front of me, intent. "Spock, I know we've had our differences. I know you don't necessarily trust me. But I have been there. Inside that thing." For an instant I feared he would actually seize me by the shoulders. "I have seen it with my own eyes!"

"How?"

I had not meant to say it.

"Because I failed." The anguish evident in his face, his voice. "I tried to stop Soran, and I failed. He did destroy the star. The energy ribbon did come to Veridian III. And millions died. All because I failed."

I backed away. Turned away. "You speak in riddles. You will cease to do so. Now."

I heard Picard's tread behind me on the carpet. His words came rapidly then, a cascade of remorse and the horror of memory. "I remember the ribbon coming. Fire in the sky. Soran, that madman, was laughing and throwing his hands up to it. The storm was so brilliant that I had to close my eyes. And when I opened them again--I was there. In that place, that twisted reality where nothing is real."

I shuddered, unable to prevent it. Turned abruptly to hold his eyes with mine. "What did you say?"

"It's as real as you want it to be; that's what Guinan said." His words transfixed me. "She was there, you see--like she'd never left. She told me the ribbon is a doorway, to a place where the laws of time do not apply."

I could not move, my forbidden thoughts had paralyzed me so. I fought for control, fought not to hear the vicious, treacherous voice of unspeakable, lunatic possibilities. "You are saying... you were inside the rogue singularity."

"Yes!"

"Tell me what you saw. Precisely."

"I don't know, precisely. A dream. A... subjective reality, of my own making. But more real than any dream I ever had." He straightened, as if acknowledging the truth to himself for the first time. "More real than my life. When I was there--it was this reality that was the dream."

I could not face him. I was not certain what madness was in my face. "I cannot accept this," I heard myself say. "Even if it were possible... how did you escape? You should not even have survived!"

It was then that I knew; I had begun to believe him.

He was eager to explain, to make me believe. "I asked Guinan if it was possible to leave. 'Where would you go?' she said. 'If you leave, you can go anywhere. Any time.' And so I told her that I would return to Veridian III. To stop Soran. I asked her to come with me. She said she couldn't leave, because she was already there."

"Temporal paradox." Inwardly, I felt numb horror that I was granting any credence to this madness.

"Yes, exactly." I heard him clear his throat. "But she said that she knew of someone who could."

No. No--

The dropping of the other shoe. I knew, then, and somewhere marveled that I had not seen it coming. Did he mean...? Oh, no, these thoughts were far too dangerous. I did not want to see what he was telling me. Did not want to believe it. So long since I had allowed myself to hope for anything, I feared the understanding of what he was trying to tell me would destroy me.

I became aware that I was shaking, shudders passing through me, my hands trembling as leaves might, in the slightest breath of wind.

I knew.

I turned, then, soulless, hollow with the knowledge. The question welled up in me from some dark place and I had to speak it. Had to, or perish. Only one word--and it cost me something irretrievable to say it. The pain in my throat became unbearable. I spoke the word, in a voice not my own.

"Alive?"

Picard shook his head, painfully, wearily, and I felt nausea rise, the only response my body could make. "No, Ambassador. Not any more. I'm sorry."

There was a weight, then. Crushing me. Dragging me down into the darkness. I bowed my head under that weight; I did not black out. Finally, gradually, I was able to draw a breath.

"Tell me," I said, when I was able.

He told me.

When even my limited control began to slip under the weight of his words, I turned and went to stand beside the window. I pressed my palms flat against the wide casement, my weight resting on my arms. I kept my head down, my face concealed. Unbearable, if he should see me in this moment. I said nothing when Picard fell silent.

T'hy'la...

So many years. A lifetime, in human terms. And in all that time I never permitted the faintest thread of hope, never allowed myself to contemplate the possibility that he did not die.

Oh, Father, help me to stop this. Even now, eleven hours later, I cannot face the undeniable truth of his tale. I cannot prevent the belief. It is madness. I know it is madness. Picard himself is mad and I have caught the disease.

But I cannot stop the fierce, white-hot thread of my own unwilling belief. It is burning me, from the inside out. Picard, for all his arrogance, is a man of honor and does not lie.

"He made a difference," he whispered, when I did not speak. "As he always did, he made a difference."

I do not know how long I stood like that. I do not know what thoughts were in my brain, if any. At last I made myself mouth the word, as if by that acknowledgment I could accept what Picard had said. Dead. A week ago. Without me.

Again.

The first coherent thought I had was that I would kill Jean-Luc Picard where he stood.

For letting him die? For telling me? Perhaps merely for having been there, having spoken to him, touched him, in my place-- didn't he know what I would have given, even for those brief hours?

In the moment of madness when I imagined my hands closing about Picard's throat, it might have been any of these, or all of them. Then the moment was past, and I could see, and what I saw was the shape of a word he had spoken.

I turned. Spoke the word, in a voice that sounded like a stranger's.

"A doorway."

"I beg your pardon?"

My old teacher's words were suddenly crystalline in my memory, like dilithium, cutting me with razor edges: There are two universal truths. I took one step toward Picard, so swiftly that he flinched. But now it was not his blood I desired.

"Tell me what she said, Picard. Verbatim."

"I'm not sure I--"

The very air seemed to burn with my need to be certain. "Verbatim! What did she say, when she told you that she could not leave?"

"She said, 'I can't leave. I'm already there.'"

Causality. Paradox. Temporal mechanics. These things I could understand.

All at once, I could see and think and breathe again. "Therefore implying that both selves were real, and could not coexist in the same timeline. What else?"

"She said, 'Time has no meaning here.'" He quite clearly thought me mad. "Spock, what is it you're saying, exactly?"

Irrationally, I wanted to laugh. Georges Mordreaux would have. Oh, how right he had been.

"Time is an illusion," I said, "and nothing is real."

He tried to apologize to me, as if I could have any interest in his guilt. I suppose I must have seemed irrational to him; perhaps I was. "Ambassador, forgive me," he said, unable to look at me when he said it. "It was my fault. I failed him, just as I failed Veridian III in the first timeline. I cost James Kirk his life."

I did not want to hear these things. "I am not interested in assigning blame," I said to him. The truth. For if I accepted any part of his self-condemnation... I did not know what I would do.

Picard would not let it go. He shook his head savagely. "I could have stopped Soran a dozen ways. I could have gone to another time, another place--could have stopped him before he ever left the Enterprise!" His misery was plain. "I could have brought Kirk with me out of the Nexus, could have gone back and tried to stop the Duras sisters. The Enterprise need never have been lost! Kirk need never have died."

Overwhelming, this need to silence him. There was a bright conflagration within me, an admixture of belief and denial so overpowering I was afraid to examine it closely. I could not bear to hear any more. Not now. "Captain Picard, I am not interested in your guilty conscience!"

His breath caught audibly. "Ambassador?"

I could not look at him. "You will go now, Captain."

"Spock, please. You must believe that I--"

"Must I? You presume to understand me too well, Picard. You have given me your news. Now go, and leave me in peace."

He did, finally, when I made it plain I had said all that I would say to him.

* * *

T'Kuht rises.

Twelve hours, fourteen minutes, since Picard left me. I required twenty-two minutes to regain my physiological controls, after he had gone. Nineteen minutes to find and access the storage wafer containing that long-ago log recording. Seventeen minutes to unencrypt the file, and another four minutes to reassert control sufficient for listening to it. Three hours, thirty-seven minutes and twelve seconds to listen to it, beginning to end, as I once said I would never do.

Five hours, thirty-nine minutes to recall and study every document on singularities I ever compiled. One hour and two minutes to download, from the VSA computers, the sensor data recorded by the Enterprise-D before her demise. Two point seven minutes for the computer to calculate the hypothetical construct I built from those documents.

Fifty-two minutes since I read the result of those calculations on my screen.

I do not want to believe what it is telling me.

. . .

All my life, I have accepted the truths of my computers. They have been tools, servants, a means to an end. I have been their master, and in turn they have revealed their secrets to me. These digital brains are safe, can be relied upon. If they should falter, a concrete, finite cause can always be detected by one who understands their inner workings, given patience, and sufficient time.

There is nothing safe in this, for what it tells me threatens any measure of peace I might have found.

It is possible.

Given the right gravitational conditions, the right speed and trajectory, the right vessel with the right shielding... it is possible. A small, powerful warp shuttle--such as the one Shara and I had built several years ago--might accomplish it.

It is hypothetically possible to duplicate the conditions recorded aboard the Lakul, eighty years ago.

. . .

No. Too dangerous. Too much to risk, to let myself believe in that possibility. I have already borne too much, these last years. I could not bear the cost if I should try, and fail.

T'Sharen, gone. My father. Even my little cat, who died quietly in her sleep six years ago, while I and her eldest son held her hands. She asked me to let her go... to release her katra rather than bring her to the Hall of Ancient Thought.

Well, Vulcan was never her home.

I could not help any of them. And now even my life's work is taken from me; after what occurred with Pardek, neither Starfleet nor the Diplomatic Corps shall suffer my presence. I am an outcast, as I have not been, truly, since I was a child.

. . .

Soran would not risk it. He endeavored to bring the ribbon to him, unwilling to chance the mercurial whims of its gravitational backlash. He would have murdered a world to avoid that risk. But then, he did not have the benefit of my own studies on the anomaly. I never published them. After the funeral, I put away my research forever.

And what would I not risk, to preserve this hard-won emptiness, this detachment I have cultivated? What would I not sacrifice, to exterminate this treacherous seed of hope?

I do not want to believe in this!

. . .

In recent years, I have sometimes gone weeks without thinking of him. The grief I shut down long ago, out of self- preservation. Without the roses to remind me, I have sometimes managed to forget.

But I can smell them, now, on the night wind which blows off the plain. And for this moment I can see, though it pains me, what I have become. What a hollow existence I have made for myself, by closing myself off from life so efficiently. How long has it been, since I felt truly alive?

I think--almost a century.

And suddenly, standing by the window of my study, breathing that fragrance, I can remember it. Can remember the last time, as if it were yesterday. I am here. Reaching out, to touch his hand where it rested against the edge of the window. Feeling the warm surge of his thoughts under my touch. I am here.

It was always so. With him, I was always alive, always strong. He made me forget to be afraid. And I find that what I want or do not want to believe changes nothing.

It is, after all, too late not to hope.

[end log]

[Memorandum: stardate 48673.6 ...recording]

This is a legal and binding document. Let it show that all lands and property belonging to Spock, son of Sarek and Amanda, shall be from this day willed to Rear Admiral David Walker, son of Doctor Saavik and Doctor Kevan Walker. This bequest shall include the estate at SahaiKahr and all ancestral holdings, as well as all property contained therein and any and all financial holdings. (See identity verification, following.)

Attach this memo to personal log file beginning stardate 9812.7 and ending this date. Restrict file access to stored retina pattern Walker, Admiral David, Starfleet. Forward this message and attachment to Starfleet Operations, Earth, San Francisco, priority mail.

. . .

Begin memo:

David,

I am forwarding this recording so that you will understand. Tell them what you wish; I have always found your judgment to be sound.

I wish that he might have known you better. He would have found in you an officer worthy of his loyalty and respect. As you have been worthy of mine.

The house and all my holdings are yours, to do with as you please. I am taking the warp shuttle.

Live long, and prosper.

Spock

* * *

Gaze no more in the bitter glass Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.

from "The Two Trees" William Butler Yeats

* * *

A hawk circles, and its shadow follows, running along the frozen ground. For an instant there are two hawks, one above, one below. Then the one in the sky banks east, over the treetops, freed from its shadow in the moment before it is gone.

In a place where I was not a second before, I stand watching the disappearing shape and draw a breath--my first of this world. The air is cold and crisp and smells of evergreens. I breathe it in and close my eyes, and make an effort to slow the rapid pounding of my heart.

Without success.

At last I open my eyes, turning, my gaze seeking any sign that I have not been fatally mistaken. I am standing on a slope of some considerable elevation, though still a distance below the treeline. It is early morning, the sun still low in the sky. A grassy alpine meadow slopes down and to the east.

Frost lies heavy on the grass, and autumn is in the air.

I take in my surroundings, weighing, categorizing out of long habit. A full circle of this spectacular view, and I can see nothing more than mountain and forest and rock and sky. I make myself draw breath.

Have I miscalculated?

But I cannot think of that. I begin instead to follow the curve of the meadow down the mountain, on foot.

I walk in silence, each step carefully measured on the slippery, frost-laden grass. Each exhalation engenders a little puff of steam before my lips. I am not accustomed to such cold; if I do not find shelter of some kind before nightfall, I shall be uncomfortable indeed.

I am thinking of this, finding it preferable to thinking of the other--the possibility that I have been wrong from the beginning--when I hear the sound.

I stop, breath held, and listen.

Yes. Unmistakable. The noise comes again, a bright, sharp crack dying rapidly away into faint echoes. A pause, and then the sound repeats.

Heedless now of the slick turf, I hurry in the direction of the sound.

* * *

I see the house before I see anyone, but as soon as my eyes find the structure, I know.

I cannot explain how I know. If it is a reproduction of a real dwelling, it is one I have never seen before. But I am as certain of it as I am of anything. This is his house.

The sound comes again, a sharp crack from the front of the house, echoes sounding up the mountainside and dying away rapidly. I cannot name the thing in my heart; it is too large to be contained, and spills outward, liquid heat in my throat, my abdomen. His house. I breathe the name before I know what I have done and slip on the grass in my haste.

I have reached the corner of the house; I step from shadow into light, the morning sun coming up over the ridge, and in the first instant, my eyes find him.

A silhouette only, against the sunrise, a figure standing some eight meters away, turning at the sound of my tread on the frozen earth. A sound escapes me, one I cannot control; I shade my eyes and see him clearly for the first time. And still I cannot, dare not hope that this is real.

We only look at one another, a long silence in which impossibility wavers, fades. And very suddenly all the silences that have ever been between us do not matter any more.

He smiles in welcome, and rests his weight casually on the ax handle; he has been splitting logs in the chill morning air. His eyes flash gold as the sunrise.

"Hello, old friend. It's good to see you."

I have stopped at the edge of the garden, unable to come nearer. But when he speaks the words, shaping a bridge across the frozen ground between us, I can move again. My answer, when it comes, is tight and catches on an unsteady intake of breath.

"I believe the correct response would be... 'Same goes for me.'"

I speak the words as if they were written for me. As if we have lived this moment a thousand times in as many lifetimes. He laughs, a low, easy sound that drowns me in memory. I cannot help it; my lips curve in answer--and once I begin to smile I do not know how to stop. I am drinking in the sight of the living reality of him like clear water after a very long drought. The tightness in my throat is nearly unbearable.

"It's been a long time," he says at last. His quick gaze travels to the faint touch of silver at my temples. "But longer for you than for me, I think." His expressive face alters with dawning memory and the perception of the impossibility of this place, this unexpected meeting. Trying to understand.

I take the last step required to bring us face to face, hold those mercurial, changeable eyes with mine. I am struggling to find a voice with which to speak the words I have come so far to say, the words I have ached to say for what feels like all my life.

"I have...a great many things to tell you," I say at last, and then break off, unable to continue. It is too much. Too much to stand here with him, so close, to see the light dancing in his eyes, so close I might reach out and touch him. The uncertainty is rising, swift and treacherous. No phantom, surely, no dream--Vulcans do not dream--but what if I am wrong?

Then one strong, capable hand closes on my shoulder. It is real, and warm, and in the moment when James Kirk touches me I feel the faintest whisper of his thoughts.

And I know.

I know that I have not been wrong, about anything.

Very suddenly, the sound and sight and feel of him come up in a wave. A heavy heat is welling in my chest, threatening to spill over. I fight to catch my breath. Try to find words for the unrestrained, winged thing that touch has freed in me; what comes out is the name, raw in my throat. "Jim."

Brightness surfaces in the hazel eyes, an answer to my naked plea. The grip on my shoulder is a reassuring solidity, the crooked grin a homecoming I have never really permitted myself to hope for.

Then I am pulled forward, stumbling, into a fierce embrace, and James Kirk is burying his face unashamedly against my shoulder.

His breath is warm there, and sweet.

All at once, I feel certain that those strong hands at my back are the only thing holding me together. There is light in me trying to get out. It feels bright enough to burn me, to dissolve me. I have put my hands into his hair and not known it; he has let me do it. I am shaking uncontrollably.

"It's all right, my friend," he says at last, lifting his head. "It's all right." His voice rumbles in his chest, and the resonance runs through me, distant plate tectonics, bedrock settling into place. The patterns of his living thoughts surge under my hands. A sound comes out of me then, and words I cannot hold back.

"Oh, t'hy'la, it has been so long--"

"I know." The corners of his mouth tremble unsteadily, and he swallows. "I know. But that doesn't matter now. None of that matters." Then he covers my hand with his own, shifts so that my fingertips rest at his temple, an unmistakable invitation-- and the brightness in his eyes brims to silver. "We've got all the time in the world."

It is a promise, and I cannot keep that light inside me any more. It spills out, and I close my eyes. I merely stand there,my hands on his face. I want to weep. I know I will, in the end, when I finally let go, let myself touch his thoughts, so electric under my hands--but not yet.

First, there is something I must do.

I make myself open my eyes, make myself meet that questioning gaze. I take a step back, though it is possibly the hardest thing I have ever done. I let my hands fall.

His puzzled, slightly hurt expression wrenches at me, in some vital place.

"Spock? Don't you want to--?"

I would laugh, if I could only spare breath for it. Yes. Oh yes, I want to. I let the words show in my eyes, suddenly fearless. Yes. I draw an unsteady breath. Bow my head.

And I am kneeling, on the hard earth at Jim's feet.

"Lacking thy shield, I shall shelter thee..."

The End