Chapter Text
Spock does not bother with maintaining an air of detachment or aloofness as he rushes through the halls to get to sickbay. When he enters the room, it is to the sight of McCoy grasping Jim’s shoulders tightly while tilting him onto his side, the veins in Jim’s neck bulging obscenely as his body betrays him, shaking uncontrollably beneath McCoy’s hands.
The doctor is shouting, “Get me anesthizine gas, now Chapel!” Spock feels rooted to the spot as a frantic nurse Chapel grabs a mask fitted with gas capsules and with steady hands straps it to the captain’s face. “Dammit, he isn’t breathing through it, this won’t do anything—”
Spock experiences a most strange sensation, one of being separated from his body as he walks slowly forward with eyes frozen in place, trained on Jim’s face. The captain’s eyes are open but unseeing, face going increasingly red as the blood is pushed through arterial lines with the extreme pressure building up from his tense muscles. Spock forces his own calm, centering himself.
“Doctor, what do I do.” His voice is flat, lacking inflection.
Blue eyes look up at him in irritation. “I don’t know Spock! I’m trying to calm him down but I can’t do anything if he won’t breathe—” he cuts himself off, and everything goes very still as Jim seizes in a way that feels final, a statuesque picture held in immortal pain as his eyes widen and lock onto the far wall. Everyone else within the room falls into stark silence until McCoy breaks it like fragile glass.
“Oh no you don’t, Jim.” There’s a hypo in his hand before Spock even sees him reach for it and the hiss of it is loud in the silent room. “He’s slipping, Chapel.”
Spock interjects. “What do you mean?”
“Coma.”
Jim goes limp and McCoy is quick to lever the captain up to a half-sitting position as his head lolls onto his shoulder. McCoy rubs at his extremities, Jim’s bare feet peeking out from the blanket laid haphazardly over him. “I’m at a loss,” he says almost to himself in barely contained panic, but contained all the same. “A sedative will only send him under so far I may not be able to get him back and the stimulant I just gave him has its own side effects on an overtaxed nervous system. Spock,” McCoy turns to face him, a solemn kind of expression found in blue eyes, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Spock stands there both within and without time, the threads of reality twisting into the finest of silk, winding around his neck and threatening to choke him. His eyes sink to the floor and his consciousness fades to within himself, searching—hoping for something he has missed. This goes beyond McCoy’s medical experience, Jim’s ailment gone past the physical and so Spock reaches into memory, into the mind.
The idea comes upon him with such clarity he almost wishes for the human language to admit his folly aloud.
“The spark, Doctor. Electricity.”
McCoy eyes him incredulously as Spock pushes forward, setting fingertips to Jim’s cheek, brow, temple in swift accord. Jim trembles from aftershocks but Spock feels him almost push into his touch in response. He is not lost yet. I will not allow it, not again, Captain.
“What the hell are you talking about—spit it out man I’m a doctor not a mind reader!”
Spock peers into Jim’s empty, heavy-lidded eyes. “When the captain returned to us, I remembered something that felt out of place. I put it away, thinking it inconsequential but I now know I was mistaken. Ready your cortical stimulator, Doctor. You will need it.”
He hears the doctor scoff but accede, returning to Jim’s side to place the equipment upon the captain’s sweaty forehead. “I intend to initiate a meld, recreating the conditions under which I believe the captain first lost his memory. It was taken from him in such a fashion beneath the obelisk, I know this now. A pinpointed stream of high-voltage electrons were sent through Jim’s hippocampus, and so we will imitate such origins.”
He hears McCoy gasp even as Spock closes his eyes, his fingers slipping against Jim’s heated skin.
“It’ll fry you, Spock! I won’t admit to knowing a damn thing about your Vulcan mumbo-jumbo but even I can conjecture that shocking him—even at low levels—while you’re in there won’t be good!”
Dark eyes open and dart to McCoy’s unbelieving blue. “It is not my safety that matters here.”
“Like hell it isn’t,” McCoy growls. “You think Jim wants to wake to that? You think he’ll be pleased to know the harm you went through for him? What if the damage is irreversible! What if you end up like Jim?” McCoy huffs. “This would have all been for nothing.”
“Once again, your Human emotions cloud the truth. If my life or sanity were to be sacrificed for the captain’s…” he looks down on the man that he realizes he would do anything for, all calculations ending in a resounding yes if it meant Jim would live, thrive, “then such an outcome would be preferred.”
Before the doctor can say another word, Spock feels himself falling into darkness, the tumultuous grasping of Jim’s mind like Terran tar, Vulcan magma, hot and unforgiving in its conquest. The meld is not like before, the storm banked and in its place a planet’s beginning and end. Unbelievable force and darkness assault him in turn as he crawls through Jim’s defenses, only to find something like Jim’s countenance huddled in a far place, set apart from the rest. There is no physical body here and yet, Jim appears to him as a child, made small in his fear.
I have come, Jim. You are not alone.
Spock? A tentative voice calls out. It is Jim’s usual cadence, no matter his visage. He is still in command even here, locked away in the far corners of his mind. I don’t…don’t know where to go.
I will guide you.
Jim’s hand is small as Spock wields it, welcoming the fluid and intangible persona of his captain deeper into the recesses of the mind, into memories Spock will admit to not desiring to see again, though he keeps this from Jim.
Here, the planet Amerind is all around them, and Spock remembers even the scent of it, the wind once again scraping against his skin. The sensation is one he still has not forgotten as it ties forever to the fear he will admit now he had felt at seeing Jim so helpless on the planet’s surface.
But Jim is happy here, the small, child-like form at his side smiling. Spock is taken aback by the conflicting emotions, threat and comfort intertwined into one. Jim then appears as a man, both at once, vulnerability and iron will folding seamlessly into one being.
Spock is momentarily entranced.
It was good, wasn’t it? Jim says softly, a ghost of a thought. Spock does not answer. His captain turns thoughtful. But not as good as it was made to be.
The idea of his captain shifts, facing him and yet surrounding him, Jim’s mind welcoming with an ease that Spock can feel in his physical body kept separate from this place. He feels his shoulders lower incrementally, down from the high-stress position close to his ears. Spock feels a sigh surround him.
I’m tired, Spock. Weary of living these half lives, stuck in two places. You know I’m not built for it, not made for not giving my all. I dive in headfirst or not at all and it’s made me sick to the center of me, I know you all see it. His sadness is overwhelming. You must erase it. Take it from me, Spock.
Spock has known this would be the catalyst, the thing he must do if Jim is to reconcile with himself and become whole again, though the grief of the reality is shattering. Jim so desperately wanted to keep Miramanee. Spock sends a solemn agreement across brainwaves, soothing Jim’s discomfort caused by his declaration. Such feeling is soon overwhelmed by a warm wave of affection from Jim, pure and painted the color of forests, lush vegetation across Spock’s inner eye.
Place her somewhere safe, Spock. And the little one. I can’t hold onto them any longer but knowing they’re safe with you has its consolations. As do…other things.
The hand returns to Spock’s, spectral yet still somehow so real, thicker fingers than his own intertwining, caressing, cherishing. Spock cannot mistake Jim’s feelings here, not within a mind so open and willing for him to touch, to understand. Jim hides nothing from him. Yet Spock feels himself respond tentatively, his secrets and the letting of Jim see himself how Spock views him feeling unconscionably personal. Language is not needed here, and Spock is glad for it as he cannot imagine a single iota of vocabulary in any known dialect to be able to convey his feelings for the man he has risked everything for and would do so again.
I only wish you to be whole, Jim.
With you at my side, Spock, how could I be anything else?
It is simple work, falling into each other. The experience is at once like nothing Spock has ever conceived and also the most familiar of sensations, the act of surrendering like a soft cushion to the primal fear of the plummet. The memories of Amerind are sorted and removed, tucked into Spock’s consciousness with a feeling of relief that wafts from Jim’s very core, gratitude permeating the unreality around them. Spock hears Jim sigh softly within the space.
They served their purpose. For a moment Spock is allowed a flash of hazel, bright and alive and so unlike what Jim’s physical body has been able to conceive of late. They brought me to you. It was not Miramanee I loved truly, Spock. She was simply the soft place to land when I needed it most. You, however, belong to me. It would truly be my end if we were forever parted, Spock. I won’t allow it.
Spock feels a tinge of amusement in the similarity of their own separate sentiment. Outside of the meld he feels his mouth and voice alert McCoy of his timing of the shock, demanding it presently. Within the meld, he allows his contentment to surround them both, holding Jim to him as he begins to sense the feeling of a low hum of what he knows to be the cortical stimulator furrowing into Jim’s consciousness.
Then so be it, Captain. I am yours.
The meld erupts in white, and Spock cannot hold on any longer.
When Spock awakens, it is to the tear-filled eyes of his captain, an unsteady smile pulling at the corners of the man’s mouth as he hovers over his first officer’s body. Spock feels his shoulders clasped in a firm grip.
His throat is unexpectedly dry when he whispers, “Are you well, Captain?”
McCoy’s unwelcome answer comes barreling towards him, loud and jarring in the comfortable silence of what Spock recognizes to be the sickbay. “Yeah, he’s fine, just dandy. You’ve only been out a couple hours and he’s been the perfect blushing maiden, ready to kiss you awake at every turn. What was that old story, Snow White? Sleeping Beauty? Either way you’re neither, you green-blooded…” he grumbles, his voice fading as he exits the room.
Jim laughs, another tear slipping down a slightly sharper cheek, less plump from his prolonged misery. He looks tired, drawn. Spock wishes to see such things reversed immediately, saying as such when he suggests the captain would use his time better by resting instead of keeping vigil by Spock’s bedside, a sentiment met with the expected amount of rebuff.
Silently within his own mind he thinks farther into the future, hoping their life will finally return to what was; the same, comfortable rapport that has nearly always been found between them slotting back into place.
Well, not quite the same.
Jim’s hand trembles as he caresses Spock’s cheek and in so doing Spock can only assume they have been left alone. “Captain, decorum insists—”
“Oh, decorum can go to hell.”
Jim’s lips are warm against his own, the moisture from tears mingling between chapped skin. The kiss begins modestly, even as Spock’s own mouth returns the gesture. Jim deepens it quickly, parting his lips to dart a soft tongue across Spock’s skin, tasting and asking without words for an entrance that Spock finds himself unable to keep from admitting. Stale breath and salty tears mix with something entirely Human and Spock is filled with wonder, every part of him reaching towards his captain, tugging the man to lie clumsily next to him on the bed not meant for two grown bodies.
They part with a breath and as Jim fumbles with his own dimensions, trying to fit into the small space, Spock wonders at the ease that his captain leans into him while their bodies touch from chest to knee. As if Jim can read what he’s thinking, the smirk Spock hadn’t realized he missed so much pulls at the captain’s face. “A Vulcan mind meld can certainly get rid of pesky boundaries right quick,” he teases. Spock’s only answer is to raise an angled brow.
Still another tear traces down Jim’s face. Spock brings a finger up to tentatively touch. “What is the matter? Are you in pain, Jim?”
Jim shakes his head dismissively. “No, no it’s just residual from the treatment. Bones said things are still sorting themselves out up here” —he points to his forehead— “and so my emotions are unstable. Don’t worry so much, Mr. Spock. I feel better than I can remember feeling in a long time.”
Spock feels apprehension lower over the contentment of seeing Jim alive and well. “And how much do you remember, Captain?”
Jim leans back, putting scant inches of space between them as his expression turns pensive. “I know there is something missing, and Bones confirmed as much. Putting it all together, I can assume that you did some…rearranging.” Flashes of Jim saying something similar during the meld in the hallway come to mind of ‘straightening the shelves’.
Spock hums. “To some effect.”
Hazel eyes look at him, from the tip of his nose to chin, fingers brushing softly into Spock’s hair and in return Spock looks his fill. Jim’s voice is soft and full of emotion. “The thing I remember most is the feeling of safety. Safety, after a long time of not knowing if I would ever return home again.”
Time takes on a slowness, the air between them charged with something Spock fears he does not understand but desires anyway. “Have you returned home, Captain?”
Jim’s eyes flash with renewed fire. The slip of command—of self and others—fits itself into place over familiar features and Spock allows himself the rush of relief in witness of it.
“Wherever you are is sure to be home, Mr. Spock. Thanks for keeping the lights on for me.”
Spock slowly places a hand at Jim’s nape, the feeling of shortened hair and warm skin a new and foreign sensation he believes he would like to experience far more often, drawing him close. Lips hover in phantasmic orbit, circling in halcyon space, the distance charged with anticipation. Spock’s voice is rough when he speaks, dark eyes locked to Terran sands.
“I would welcome you, always. I have sorely missed you, Jim.”
“I love you, Spock.”
Spock allows himself the hint of a smile. “Likewise, Captain.”
THE END