"Theta Nix" 4/4- A Star Trek fanfiction
Author's Chapter Notes:
PLEASE READ THIS WARNING!!!!! This is the final act of "Theta Nix." I will not say "stop reading now and imagine the ending" because that would undermine the entire point of this story. If you finish it, you will know what I mean. But though I won't spoil it here, I will say that if you want a 100% happy ending complete with puppies and kittens and rainbows...it's not going to happen.
()()()
Part IV
“It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.”
-Albus Dumbledore
Existence well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can.
The past is now part of my future,
The present is well out of hand."
()()()
“How did you get here?”
Jim's brain spun like a compass dangled before a magnet. There was no way Other Spock could have just showed up...just popped up out of nowhere...unless...
No.
The Other Spock stepped forward, fingertips pressed together imperiously. Though his face was as composed as a death mask, compassion shone in this Spock more purely than it had ever touched Jim's.
“I believe,” he said gravely “that you have deduced the truth yourself, Jim.”
No.
Bones' face materializing....the N addicts' story...
“Leila was right, I was passing to a different world...the real one,” Jim managed to choke out though lungs clenched tight as a fist, drenched in cold shock. “That 'time machine' is a drug machine. Oh my God...I am high on Substance N right now. That's why my brain isn't working, why I can't think straight. This is a trip...isn't not real...those needles were full of Substance N and....”
The pieces fell together in awful symmetry, reality sharpening through hysteric fragments. The truth streamed from his mouth unclotted as his thoughts, rolling off his tongue as they flitted through his brain.
“I...there is no time travel. It's a myth made up by the Thetan leaders in order to control the masses. They wanted their people to believe that they lived in the best of all possible worlds so they would never question their leaders' goodness or authority.”
With a sudden bolt, he flung himself across the meters between himself and Prime Minister. Within second,s Jim had him in a death grip, exhilarated at the eyes bulging terrified in scaley sockets.
“YOU are the one dealing Substance N to your own people, not the Ferengi! You want them to be complacent so they will not challenge your authority!”
“Jim,” the other Spock's restraining hand on Jim's shoulder was real as the Minister whose pulse raced in the thorny windpipe. “This is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is back on that planet. All people here but me, everyone you have meet since your injection, are all figments of your subconscious. You are in the sickbay of the Enterprise. Dr. McCoy sent for me when your condition worsened and he was unable to wake you from your drug coma. I have mind melded with you in an attempt to bring you back. All of this is a figment of your imagination, induced by the substance. Only I am real.”
“Jim, do not head this imposter!” the young Spock' hissed out desperately, naked fear in his face. Jim ached to see him...so young and fierce and beautiful. In two smooth, calm strides, Spock was at his side as he had always been, leaning into Jim to speak in hushed tones. “I do not believe him to be my counterpart. I neither recognize him nor trust him, Jim.”
“Jim,” Other Spock's desperation mirrored the younger's perfectly. Jim found himself sandwhiched between two fierce-eyed Spocks; one young and bright as a penny, the other weathered by centuries, but both bent on him with identical tense focus. “I would never harm you...”
“He wants me dead.” the younger Spock deadpaned. “He wants you all to himself.”
“Jim, do not listen to...”
“But his plans are futile,” iron fingers curved warm around Jim's wrists. Spock's face was inches from Jim's. Every pore in that dry white skin was thrown in sharp relief, every bristle upon that neck, every brown flesh curl in the iris of his eyes a valley. “You came for me. You behaved...with undue emotion,” the mouth trembled, amused, in that same old familiar way. “but nonetheless, I am grateful to you beyond all speaking. Nothing shall ever part us. Entreat me not to leave you, Jim. Where you go, I shall follow.”
Spock kissed him.
For a moment, Jim was blown clear from his mind. Spock's left thumb stroked Jim's temple as his fingers snaked through Jim's hair, his right hand possessively cupping his hip. Breaking like a cracking dam, Jim threw his arms around him; hugging the warm, breathing, pulsing, wriggling body to him as though he'd never let go, kissing him as if Jim was drowning and Spock's lips were air. The universe was a blur of rubbing noses and cheeks and eyes and skin hot and flushed and mingling tears. Jim's tongue plunged deep into Spock's mouth, both of his hands at the base of the Vulcan's skull, pressing their faces together until his bridge of his nose hurt.
Spock's brow pressed sweaty against Jim's. The flutter of Jim's heart was almost rapid as the Vulcan's as their chests pushed tight against another. Jim closed his eyes to soak in the moment. A muffled dry sob shuddered through him. Eyelashes brushed against his. The tip of Spock's nose rubbed a velvet streak against his cheek. Dry lips planted a soft, nipping kiss on his jaw.
“I'm here, Jim. Here, on Theta Nix, we can live forever.”
Icy horror sickened Jim's stomach.
As painfully as detatching a limb...Jim detangled himself from Spock's arms.
“The source of much immorality in the world....”
“You're not real...” he managed to gasp out. “You're...not Spock...the real Spock...my Spock...would never say that.”
“Jim...”
“YOU'RE NOT HIM!” ripped from him.. “This Substance causes a complacency... a mindless obediance...that my Spock would have hated. He found it repulsive. You...”
Jim began to laugh hysterically. His shaking fingers stretched longingly toward Vulcan's cheek, pulling back at the last millisecond before the gap closed.
“You are a very close copy, but...you're not my Spock. You're not the one who'd kick my ass in chess and tell me I'm being illogical and get me so pissed off at you sometimes I'd scream.”
“Sounds quite unpleasant.”
“Yeah, but it was real...it was real life...this...” Jim stumbled backwards as if drunkenly. “This is nothing compared to really living, even at its best it couldn't be have as good...”
Panting, gestulating spastically, he backed farther, quite derranged; as aquiver with truth and madness as Nietzsche's madman who raced barefoot through the streets, heralding the death of God.
“This...this kind of denial is the root of so much evil in the world and Spock wouldn't have condoned it. I want you,” Jim told Substance-N-Spock. “God, what I'd give to sink into your arms right now...but you're not the one I want...you're not him. The real Spock would have understood that wanting to get the past back gets you nowhere. He understood that sometimes you just have to accept a situation the way it is and deal with it, instead of trying to cheat your way out of it. He tried to tell me once. I never really got it...I thought it was about beating the Kobiyashi Maru, when all along, it was about knowing you were going to fail the test, but taking the test anyway. About going down with dignity and courage, loving the whole thing all the while. And there's something kinda awesome about that. I just have to keep carrying on, seizing whatever hope I can get, whatever joy I can find in this too short, fucked up, crazy absurd life in which we live. It's not enough. It's not even close to being enough...but sometimes, you know...I can make it enough. I will make it enough. I can't stay here. I want life.”
An unnatural smile gleamed on Substance-N-Spock's lips. Beneath the blood red sky, a sinister repitilean hue greened him.
“Well. If that is the choice that you make, Jim....”
Deny me and be condemned.
Substance-N-Spock snapped his fingers. A thousand-throated voice of one howled suddenly from behind Jim. The ruly, lion-haired mass of barefooted, scale eyed N addicts waved palms hypnotically over their heads. The Happy Song roared up in a cacophony a different tones and keys.
“We are One, You and I, in the Earth and In the Sky...”
“This human,” Substance-N-Prime-Minister annouced, throwing wide his fleshy palms. “This human...does not believe we live in the true reality.”
A disgruntled hiss erupted from the snake pit.
“He would rather return to the world of death and pain, than stay here! He thinks this all too easy!”
At this final blasphemy, the crowd exploded. Unleashed in furious wrath, a hairy wave rose up to fall upon Jim.
“Jim...”
The older, real Spock's wrinkled hand gripped his own, ancient face close enough to kiss.
“You must know the crowd does not exist,” Spock whispered. “You must know that what they speak only falsehoods. Otherwise, you might permanently damage your brain. You are very, very deep in coma, Jim.”
“What should we do?” Jim shouted in his pointed ear as the crowd descended upon them.
“Concentrate on reality. Come back.”
Reality. In reality, Spock was dead.
Dead forever.
He lay buried under New Vulcan sand. Within a year, his mossy black flesh would slide off his bones.
And I will never touch him again...never, never, never, never.
Maybe Jim would rather let his brain be fried, exist as a vegetable, then return to a world where he would never see those eyes again.
Never tell him he loved him...
He loved him.
A real flesh and blood being, not a fantasy, or a figment of his mind's own making.
I want to be the kind of person he deserved.
Wrinkling his eyelids shut, Jim nodded furiously.
The pavement split and flew up in concrete flakes, mixing smoothly with the melted sky so both worlds blurred in sound and shrieking.
I love you, Spock.
A leap of faith...
Jim's eyes flew open.
The light stung him and seared through his eye nerves. Gasping for air, he bolted into McCoy's arms, quivering boneless on the gurney. His pierced brain was anerve with a great and terrible sanity.
()()()
“Why? ” Spock spoke first. His brow lumped in puzzled concentration “Why did you not confide in either McCoy or myself before this moment, Captain?” He paused.”...Jim?”
“I didn't want anyone to know,” Jim sighed, voice hoarse from speaking for hours, heart exhausted from jarring that summer for years. “I didn't want you to look at me and think...”Tarsus IV” everytime we were on the bridge...”
The realization of what he had just revealed slammed into him. He tried to laugh, but the sentence gushed from him shakily.
“I've never told any one any of what I just told you, before.”
Spock reached out tenatively...as if shocked by his own daring..and slowly, precisely...lay a hand on Jim's forearm in comfort.
And that was the moment that forever filled Jim with trembling: the first time his skin and Spock's touched. Years later, when he closed his eyes, he shuddered into the memory; wrecked by the terrible awe of intimacy. And no stars, no dawn, broke the shadow of that moment. A warm thumb caressed his forearm. And Jim knew right then and there that every hour from before would never cease to mean the world to him. He would never be able to shake that skin.
“Pain and suffering endure,” Spock whispered. “But so do many other things. Therefore, in the end, you will be...fine.”
()()()
“Hello, Jim.”
“Hey.”
“Well, I must say, you appear to be in better health than the last time I saw you.”
“Is my prescense unwelcome, Jim? I shall not be offended if you do not desire my company.”
“No. Please. I'd rather talk to you than Bones or Nyota...I mean I love them and I'm grateful...”
“...but you are also shamed.”
“Yeah. I'd rather talk to you. I feel like I've betrayed their trust and I am going to make it up to them...I want to live up to their expectations of me just as much as I want to live up to...his. But I want to wait to apologize to my crew face to face. It's just...don't take this the wrong way.....you...you look like him. So much like him.”
“I know.”
“I look like your Jim Kirk, don't I?”
“Yes.”
“I...I am sorry...”
“Do not apologize. Apology is...”
“Illogical?”
“Not at all illogical, when a wrong has been committed. In this case, it has not. I was going to say “unnecessary.”
“I feel so foolish.”
“I imagine.”
“I just...fell for it. Just believed it so easily because I wanted to so badly. I think he'd be ashamed of me if he were here, if he knew the immoralites, the horrible ideology I believed just to get him back...”
“Jim...”
“He wouldn't have wanted me to. I realize that now...”the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.” I don't think he would have wanted me to come for him.”
“Your counterpart came for me.”
“...what?”
“I... died once. In my original timeline. The situations were dissimilar and the circumstances of my death were much more complicated. Suffice to say, I did not remain deceased. He..came for me. Perhaps I shall supply the details when I believe that they shall not cause you pain...”
“I don't want to know.”
“Admirable. Either way, as I have said, the circumstances were different and could not be repeated. He riksed his life and sacrificed much, and while I was loathe for him to be injuired or killed on my account...I understood, because I would have done the same for him. And I was grateful.”
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course. Whether or not I answer depends greatly on your question.”
“What was he to you? The other Kirk.”
“Everything.”
“Friend. Brother. Soulmate.....Lover. Bondmate. T'hy'la.”
“Okay, so you did...eventually...okay. Okay.”
“I did not desire to pain you...”
“No. I needed to know it was possible. Hell, I didn't even know if the other you swung that way...I never asked.”
“Jim, I...have debated...with myself whether to divulge certain information to you. Whether said information would bring you comfort or pain. My counterpart was a different person from me, just as you are different from my James Kirk. Yet I know that in another universe, the other you would have desired to know.”
“I'm not him, Spock.”
“A fact of which I am painfully aware.”
“...but I think I'm enough like him for you to know you can't just bring up something like that and expect me not to be curious. Spill.”
“Do you recall the mission to Vulcan II a mere few months ago?”
“Of course I do.”
“Do you recall permitting your Spock several days of shore leave in order to visit Sarek?”
“Yes.”
“He also visited me.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He was...quite irked at me, in fact. You see, he seemed to feel that I lied to him, betrayed him, manuplated him. He felt that I had hidden vital information from him and tricked him into a situation which overwhelmed him. However, when pressed, he admitted he was not entirely sorry I had done so.”
“Did you lie to him?”
“Vulcans do not lie...”
“Don't. I know you.”
“Another you.”
“I did conceal the true nature of my relationship with the other Jim Kirk. I did not know for certain whether the same feelings would develop...you were such different persons, in divergent situations. I knew only that in any possible universe, my relationship with you would be the most important of my life, regardless of the nature of that relationship. Your first officer was annoyed with me because though I had spoken of my friendship with the other Kirk, I spoke only of our friendship. Your Spock confinded in me, that originally, he felt pure platonic friendship for you. But by the time he approached me...”
“He had loved you for years, Jim.”
“Have I errored in telling you this, now?”
“No.”
The whisper shocked Jim in its calm. “Thank you...I mean it's done, and regrets get you nowhere..I learned my lesson about dwelling the past.. “
He tried to laugh, but it came out a dry, strangled sob.
“And I got a lecture about living once,” a wry smile softened his face “from this Vulcan I used to know. I guess I'm trying to say is I'm glad to know. Truth's a rare and beautiful thing wherever you can find it,” he laughed achingly. “Thank you for telling me.”
He paused, wondering if he really wanted to know the answer to his next question.
“...do you think he knew...how I felt?”
“If you are half as transparent and endearingly, frustratingly oblivious as my own Jim Kirk...I cannot see how he would not.”
Jim smiled wistfully at that.
Neither Jim nor the other Spock spoke for a long time. Side by side, they watched the too-pale skies of New Vulcan purple in dusk, the single sun of the reclaimed world dip below the horizon line. The few days of shore leave had left Jim's head feeling solid and his heart, though sore, bursting with life. He could see stars in black and white struggling to blaze through the smoke-stain clouds and knew, within hours, they would grow fiercer in the rising dark. And there would be other worlds to discover, other stars on which to land. There was, Jim realized, a painful sort of struggle he had in since birth. Still standing here now with this Vulcan who had seen so many things, he could not shake the feeling that all he was, had been, and would ever be was present in him in that moment, that nothing was ever truly lost. Or at least was with in him that moment.
And a moment is all that he could ever ask for.
A planetary blue had settled over the desert when the Other Spock next spoke.
“What lies before you now?”
“Life.”
Spock's eyebrow twitched, amused. Jim's heart ached. Someday, he realized, that twitch would spark in him warm affection. Now, it was too raw, too close...but someday. Someday.
“What? You, of all people, should appreciate that answer. Nah, tonight is my last night on shore leave. Bones said in his medical report that I needed a few days off to deal with the stress, spend some time with some cool, chill Vulcans. I go back to my ship tomorrow.”
“Are you ready?”
“I'll make myself ready.”
They rose to their feet as if on cue. For a long moment that would never be long enough, the two men stared into one another's faces; gazes tracing ghosts of the other each once knew.
“Maybe in another life, yeah?” Jim managed a watery half-smile. The Other Spock nodded swiftly. Turning sharp on his heel, Jim strutted back towards Sarek's house. He found himself abrim with the strangest feeling, as though he'd like to run the way he had as a boy in Iowa; defiant and free, horizon-bound to never break for canyons...
“Jim.”
He halted.
“Don't look back.”
FIN.
Acknolewdegements:
*I feel like I need to mention littlebirdtold 's fic “Within Reach” because it was part of the inspiration for this fic. Her story is TOTALLY different than mine other than the fact that Spock “dies”, and Jim has a hard time dealing...but hers has a happy ending. I totally recommend it if I just made you feel all depressed and you need cheering up/a fic with hugging and kissing and sex at the end(you can find it on livejournal...check out my rec page, it's there.) I loved her story, but I started thinking to myself “Hmmm, what would have happened if Jim didn't get his Spock back...” I put the link here: because LJ is being a bitch and not letting me link in paragraph.
*The other inspirations for this story were Joy Division (especially “Heart and Soul”), the Orpheus and Eurydice myth (duh) and lots and lots of existentialism (especially Sartre, Camus, and I guess Heigdegger and Kaftka.)
*A huge thanks to argusblack for making the time-travel in chapter 2 sound more legit. (Well, as legit as telepathy travel can be, anyway :) )
*I leave it entirely up to you to decide whether or not Spock was really killed by Roltz and the Minister was dealing to his own people, or whether or not that was all a figment of Jim's subconscious. My personal belief is that the Prime Minister WAS the dealer, but Spock's death was a random, fluke thing by an unskilled would-be revolutionary, and that Jim's subconscious was trying to superimpose meaning on something horrible which happened for absolutely no reason. However, I am a firm believer that an author's opinion about a work is no more (and in some cases, less) valid than the reader's (yay postmodernism! Michel Foucault FTW!), so whatever you want to believe is fine with me:)
*People I quoted: the movie (duh), Ovid, Soren Kierkegaard gets heavily paraphrased (the leap of faith/shout-out-to “Fear and Trembling”), T.S. Eliot's “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Harry Potter, and Joy Division's "Heart and Soul" (twice.) Probably more shout outs that I'm not even aware of...just posting this now I caught at least two Plato references I swear I did not intend...
Most important of all:
* This fic is dedicated to a certain few of my best friends, the toughest people I've ever met, who have endured more than I think I could. They won't ever read this because they are way too cool to read fanfiction and too busy being BAMFs and teaching me to keep my chin up in our darkest hours, but I want to shout out to them anyway. Love you forever. You inspire me to cling to a sense of urgency and hope more than you will ever know. This one goes out to you guys.www.youtube.com/watch
PLEASE READ THIS WARNING!!!!! This is the final act of "Theta Nix." I will not say "stop reading now and imagine the ending" because that would undermine the entire point of this story. If you finish it, you will know what I mean. But though I won't spoil it here, I will say that if you want a 100% happy ending complete with puppies and kittens and rainbows...it's not going to happen.
()()()
Part IV
“It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.”
-Albus Dumbledore
Existence well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can.
The past is now part of my future,
The present is well out of hand."
()()()
“How did you get here?”
Jim's brain spun like a compass dangled before a magnet. There was no way Other Spock could have just showed up...just popped up out of nowhere...unless...
No.
The Other Spock stepped forward, fingertips pressed together imperiously. Though his face was as composed as a death mask, compassion shone in this Spock more purely than it had ever touched Jim's.
“I believe,” he said gravely “that you have deduced the truth yourself, Jim.”
No.
Bones' face materializing....the N addicts' story...
“Leila was right, I was passing to a different world...the real one,” Jim managed to choke out though lungs clenched tight as a fist, drenched in cold shock. “That 'time machine' is a drug machine. Oh my God...I am high on Substance N right now. That's why my brain isn't working, why I can't think straight. This is a trip...isn't not real...those needles were full of Substance N and....”
The pieces fell together in awful symmetry, reality sharpening through hysteric fragments. The truth streamed from his mouth unclotted as his thoughts, rolling off his tongue as they flitted through his brain.
“I...there is no time travel. It's a myth made up by the Thetan leaders in order to control the masses. They wanted their people to believe that they lived in the best of all possible worlds so they would never question their leaders' goodness or authority.”
With a sudden bolt, he flung himself across the meters between himself and Prime Minister. Within second,s Jim had him in a death grip, exhilarated at the eyes bulging terrified in scaley sockets.
“YOU are the one dealing Substance N to your own people, not the Ferengi! You want them to be complacent so they will not challenge your authority!”
“Jim,” the other Spock's restraining hand on Jim's shoulder was real as the Minister whose pulse raced in the thorny windpipe. “This is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is back on that planet. All people here but me, everyone you have meet since your injection, are all figments of your subconscious. You are in the sickbay of the Enterprise. Dr. McCoy sent for me when your condition worsened and he was unable to wake you from your drug coma. I have mind melded with you in an attempt to bring you back. All of this is a figment of your imagination, induced by the substance. Only I am real.”
“Jim, do not head this imposter!” the young Spock' hissed out desperately, naked fear in his face. Jim ached to see him...so young and fierce and beautiful. In two smooth, calm strides, Spock was at his side as he had always been, leaning into Jim to speak in hushed tones. “I do not believe him to be my counterpart. I neither recognize him nor trust him, Jim.”
“Jim,” Other Spock's desperation mirrored the younger's perfectly. Jim found himself sandwhiched between two fierce-eyed Spocks; one young and bright as a penny, the other weathered by centuries, but both bent on him with identical tense focus. “I would never harm you...”
“He wants me dead.” the younger Spock deadpaned. “He wants you all to himself.”
“Jim, do not listen to...”
“But his plans are futile,” iron fingers curved warm around Jim's wrists. Spock's face was inches from Jim's. Every pore in that dry white skin was thrown in sharp relief, every bristle upon that neck, every brown flesh curl in the iris of his eyes a valley. “You came for me. You behaved...with undue emotion,” the mouth trembled, amused, in that same old familiar way. “but nonetheless, I am grateful to you beyond all speaking. Nothing shall ever part us. Entreat me not to leave you, Jim. Where you go, I shall follow.”
Spock kissed him.
For a moment, Jim was blown clear from his mind. Spock's left thumb stroked Jim's temple as his fingers snaked through Jim's hair, his right hand possessively cupping his hip. Breaking like a cracking dam, Jim threw his arms around him; hugging the warm, breathing, pulsing, wriggling body to him as though he'd never let go, kissing him as if Jim was drowning and Spock's lips were air. The universe was a blur of rubbing noses and cheeks and eyes and skin hot and flushed and mingling tears. Jim's tongue plunged deep into Spock's mouth, both of his hands at the base of the Vulcan's skull, pressing their faces together until his bridge of his nose hurt.
Spock's brow pressed sweaty against Jim's. The flutter of Jim's heart was almost rapid as the Vulcan's as their chests pushed tight against another. Jim closed his eyes to soak in the moment. A muffled dry sob shuddered through him. Eyelashes brushed against his. The tip of Spock's nose rubbed a velvet streak against his cheek. Dry lips planted a soft, nipping kiss on his jaw.
“I'm here, Jim. Here, on Theta Nix, we can live forever.”
Icy horror sickened Jim's stomach.
As painfully as detatching a limb...Jim detangled himself from Spock's arms.
“The source of much immorality in the world....”
“You're not real...” he managed to gasp out. “You're...not Spock...the real Spock...my Spock...would never say that.”
“Jim...”
“YOU'RE NOT HIM!” ripped from him.. “This Substance causes a complacency... a mindless obediance...that my Spock would have hated. He found it repulsive. You...”
Jim began to laugh hysterically. His shaking fingers stretched longingly toward Vulcan's cheek, pulling back at the last millisecond before the gap closed.
“You are a very close copy, but...you're not my Spock. You're not the one who'd kick my ass in chess and tell me I'm being illogical and get me so pissed off at you sometimes I'd scream.”
“Sounds quite unpleasant.”
“Yeah, but it was real...it was real life...this...” Jim stumbled backwards as if drunkenly. “This is nothing compared to really living, even at its best it couldn't be have as good...”
Panting, gestulating spastically, he backed farther, quite derranged; as aquiver with truth and madness as Nietzsche's madman who raced barefoot through the streets, heralding the death of God.
“This...this kind of denial is the root of so much evil in the world and Spock wouldn't have condoned it. I want you,” Jim told Substance-N-Spock. “God, what I'd give to sink into your arms right now...but you're not the one I want...you're not him. The real Spock would have understood that wanting to get the past back gets you nowhere. He understood that sometimes you just have to accept a situation the way it is and deal with it, instead of trying to cheat your way out of it. He tried to tell me once. I never really got it...I thought it was about beating the Kobiyashi Maru, when all along, it was about knowing you were going to fail the test, but taking the test anyway. About going down with dignity and courage, loving the whole thing all the while. And there's something kinda awesome about that. I just have to keep carrying on, seizing whatever hope I can get, whatever joy I can find in this too short, fucked up, crazy absurd life in which we live. It's not enough. It's not even close to being enough...but sometimes, you know...I can make it enough. I will make it enough. I can't stay here. I want life.”
An unnatural smile gleamed on Substance-N-Spock's lips. Beneath the blood red sky, a sinister repitilean hue greened him.
“Well. If that is the choice that you make, Jim....”
Deny me and be condemned.
Substance-N-Spock snapped his fingers. A thousand-throated voice of one howled suddenly from behind Jim. The ruly, lion-haired mass of barefooted, scale eyed N addicts waved palms hypnotically over their heads. The Happy Song roared up in a cacophony a different tones and keys.
“We are One, You and I, in the Earth and In the Sky...”
“This human,” Substance-N-Prime-Minister annouced, throwing wide his fleshy palms. “This human...does not believe we live in the true reality.”
A disgruntled hiss erupted from the snake pit.
“He would rather return to the world of death and pain, than stay here! He thinks this all too easy!”
At this final blasphemy, the crowd exploded. Unleashed in furious wrath, a hairy wave rose up to fall upon Jim.
“Jim...”
The older, real Spock's wrinkled hand gripped his own, ancient face close enough to kiss.
“You must know the crowd does not exist,” Spock whispered. “You must know that what they speak only falsehoods. Otherwise, you might permanently damage your brain. You are very, very deep in coma, Jim.”
“What should we do?” Jim shouted in his pointed ear as the crowd descended upon them.
“Concentrate on reality. Come back.”
Reality. In reality, Spock was dead.
Dead forever.
He lay buried under New Vulcan sand. Within a year, his mossy black flesh would slide off his bones.
And I will never touch him again...never, never, never, never.
Maybe Jim would rather let his brain be fried, exist as a vegetable, then return to a world where he would never see those eyes again.
Never tell him he loved him...
He loved him.
A real flesh and blood being, not a fantasy, or a figment of his mind's own making.
I want to be the kind of person he deserved.
Wrinkling his eyelids shut, Jim nodded furiously.
The pavement split and flew up in concrete flakes, mixing smoothly with the melted sky so both worlds blurred in sound and shrieking.
I love you, Spock.
A leap of faith...
Jim's eyes flew open.
The light stung him and seared through his eye nerves. Gasping for air, he bolted into McCoy's arms, quivering boneless on the gurney. His pierced brain was anerve with a great and terrible sanity.
()()()
“Why? ” Spock spoke first. His brow lumped in puzzled concentration “Why did you not confide in either McCoy or myself before this moment, Captain?” He paused.”...Jim?”
“I didn't want anyone to know,” Jim sighed, voice hoarse from speaking for hours, heart exhausted from jarring that summer for years. “I didn't want you to look at me and think...”Tarsus IV” everytime we were on the bridge...”
The realization of what he had just revealed slammed into him. He tried to laugh, but the sentence gushed from him shakily.
“I've never told any one any of what I just told you, before.”
Spock reached out tenatively...as if shocked by his own daring..and slowly, precisely...lay a hand on Jim's forearm in comfort.
And that was the moment that forever filled Jim with trembling: the first time his skin and Spock's touched. Years later, when he closed his eyes, he shuddered into the memory; wrecked by the terrible awe of intimacy. And no stars, no dawn, broke the shadow of that moment. A warm thumb caressed his forearm. And Jim knew right then and there that every hour from before would never cease to mean the world to him. He would never be able to shake that skin.
“Pain and suffering endure,” Spock whispered. “But so do many other things. Therefore, in the end, you will be...fine.”
()()()
“Hello, Jim.”
“Hey.”
“Well, I must say, you appear to be in better health than the last time I saw you.”
“Is my prescense unwelcome, Jim? I shall not be offended if you do not desire my company.”
“No. Please. I'd rather talk to you than Bones or Nyota...I mean I love them and I'm grateful...”
“...but you are also shamed.”
“Yeah. I'd rather talk to you. I feel like I've betrayed their trust and I am going to make it up to them...I want to live up to their expectations of me just as much as I want to live up to...his. But I want to wait to apologize to my crew face to face. It's just...don't take this the wrong way.....you...you look like him. So much like him.”
“I know.”
“I look like your Jim Kirk, don't I?”
“Yes.”
“I...I am sorry...”
“Do not apologize. Apology is...”
“Illogical?”
“Not at all illogical, when a wrong has been committed. In this case, it has not. I was going to say “unnecessary.”
“I feel so foolish.”
“I imagine.”
“I just...fell for it. Just believed it so easily because I wanted to so badly. I think he'd be ashamed of me if he were here, if he knew the immoralites, the horrible ideology I believed just to get him back...”
“Jim...”
“He wouldn't have wanted me to. I realize that now...”the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few.” I don't think he would have wanted me to come for him.”
“Your counterpart came for me.”
“...what?”
“I... died once. In my original timeline. The situations were dissimilar and the circumstances of my death were much more complicated. Suffice to say, I did not remain deceased. He..came for me. Perhaps I shall supply the details when I believe that they shall not cause you pain...”
“I don't want to know.”
“Admirable. Either way, as I have said, the circumstances were different and could not be repeated. He riksed his life and sacrificed much, and while I was loathe for him to be injuired or killed on my account...I understood, because I would have done the same for him. And I was grateful.”
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course. Whether or not I answer depends greatly on your question.”
“What was he to you? The other Kirk.”
“Everything.”
“Friend. Brother. Soulmate.....Lover. Bondmate. T'hy'la.”
“Okay, so you did...eventually...okay. Okay.”
“I did not desire to pain you...”
“No. I needed to know it was possible. Hell, I didn't even know if the other you swung that way...I never asked.”
“Jim, I...have debated...with myself whether to divulge certain information to you. Whether said information would bring you comfort or pain. My counterpart was a different person from me, just as you are different from my James Kirk. Yet I know that in another universe, the other you would have desired to know.”
“I'm not him, Spock.”
“A fact of which I am painfully aware.”
“...but I think I'm enough like him for you to know you can't just bring up something like that and expect me not to be curious. Spill.”
“Do you recall the mission to Vulcan II a mere few months ago?”
“Of course I do.”
“Do you recall permitting your Spock several days of shore leave in order to visit Sarek?”
“Yes.”
“He also visited me.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. He was...quite irked at me, in fact. You see, he seemed to feel that I lied to him, betrayed him, manuplated him. He felt that I had hidden vital information from him and tricked him into a situation which overwhelmed him. However, when pressed, he admitted he was not entirely sorry I had done so.”
“Did you lie to him?”
“Vulcans do not lie...”
“Don't. I know you.”
“Another you.”
“I did conceal the true nature of my relationship with the other Jim Kirk. I did not know for certain whether the same feelings would develop...you were such different persons, in divergent situations. I knew only that in any possible universe, my relationship with you would be the most important of my life, regardless of the nature of that relationship. Your first officer was annoyed with me because though I had spoken of my friendship with the other Kirk, I spoke only of our friendship. Your Spock confinded in me, that originally, he felt pure platonic friendship for you. But by the time he approached me...”
“He had loved you for years, Jim.”
“Have I errored in telling you this, now?”
“No.”
The whisper shocked Jim in its calm. “Thank you...I mean it's done, and regrets get you nowhere..I learned my lesson about dwelling the past.. “
He tried to laugh, but it came out a dry, strangled sob.
“And I got a lecture about living once,” a wry smile softened his face “from this Vulcan I used to know. I guess I'm trying to say is I'm glad to know. Truth's a rare and beautiful thing wherever you can find it,” he laughed achingly. “Thank you for telling me.”
He paused, wondering if he really wanted to know the answer to his next question.
“...do you think he knew...how I felt?”
“If you are half as transparent and endearingly, frustratingly oblivious as my own Jim Kirk...I cannot see how he would not.”
Jim smiled wistfully at that.
Neither Jim nor the other Spock spoke for a long time. Side by side, they watched the too-pale skies of New Vulcan purple in dusk, the single sun of the reclaimed world dip below the horizon line. The few days of shore leave had left Jim's head feeling solid and his heart, though sore, bursting with life. He could see stars in black and white struggling to blaze through the smoke-stain clouds and knew, within hours, they would grow fiercer in the rising dark. And there would be other worlds to discover, other stars on which to land. There was, Jim realized, a painful sort of struggle he had in since birth. Still standing here now with this Vulcan who had seen so many things, he could not shake the feeling that all he was, had been, and would ever be was present in him in that moment, that nothing was ever truly lost. Or at least was with in him that moment.
And a moment is all that he could ever ask for.
A planetary blue had settled over the desert when the Other Spock next spoke.
“What lies before you now?”
“Life.”
Spock's eyebrow twitched, amused. Jim's heart ached. Someday, he realized, that twitch would spark in him warm affection. Now, it was too raw, too close...but someday. Someday.
“What? You, of all people, should appreciate that answer. Nah, tonight is my last night on shore leave. Bones said in his medical report that I needed a few days off to deal with the stress, spend some time with some cool, chill Vulcans. I go back to my ship tomorrow.”
“Are you ready?”
“I'll make myself ready.”
They rose to their feet as if on cue. For a long moment that would never be long enough, the two men stared into one another's faces; gazes tracing ghosts of the other each once knew.
“Maybe in another life, yeah?” Jim managed a watery half-smile. The Other Spock nodded swiftly. Turning sharp on his heel, Jim strutted back towards Sarek's house. He found himself abrim with the strangest feeling, as though he'd like to run the way he had as a boy in Iowa; defiant and free, horizon-bound to never break for canyons...
“Jim.”
He halted.
“Don't look back.”
FIN.
Acknolewdegements:
*I feel like I need to mention littlebirdtold 's fic “Within Reach” because it was part of the inspiration for this fic. Her story is TOTALLY different than mine other than the fact that Spock “dies”, and Jim has a hard time dealing...but hers has a happy ending. I totally recommend it if I just made you feel all depressed and you need cheering up/a fic with hugging and kissing and sex at the end(you can find it on livejournal...check out my rec page, it's there.) I loved her story, but I started thinking to myself “Hmmm, what would have happened if Jim didn't get his Spock back...” I put the link here: because LJ is being a bitch and not letting me link in paragraph.
*The other inspirations for this story were Joy Division (especially “Heart and Soul”), the Orpheus and Eurydice myth (duh) and lots and lots of existentialism (especially Sartre, Camus, and I guess Heigdegger and Kaftka.)
*A huge thanks to argusblack for making the time-travel in chapter 2 sound more legit. (Well, as legit as telepathy travel can be, anyway :) )
*I leave it entirely up to you to decide whether or not Spock was really killed by Roltz and the Minister was dealing to his own people, or whether or not that was all a figment of Jim's subconscious. My personal belief is that the Prime Minister WAS the dealer, but Spock's death was a random, fluke thing by an unskilled would-be revolutionary, and that Jim's subconscious was trying to superimpose meaning on something horrible which happened for absolutely no reason. However, I am a firm believer that an author's opinion about a work is no more (and in some cases, less) valid than the reader's (yay postmodernism! Michel Foucault FTW!), so whatever you want to believe is fine with me:)
*People I quoted: the movie (duh), Ovid, Soren Kierkegaard gets heavily paraphrased (the leap of faith/shout-out-to “Fear and Trembling”), T.S. Eliot's “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, Harry Potter, and Joy Division's "Heart and Soul" (twice.) Probably more shout outs that I'm not even aware of...just posting this now I caught at least two Plato references I swear I did not intend...
Most important of all:
* This fic is dedicated to a certain few of my best friends, the toughest people I've ever met, who have endured more than I think I could. They won't ever read this because they are way too cool to read fanfiction and too busy being BAMFs and teaching me to keep my chin up in our darkest hours, but I want to shout out to them anyway. Love you forever. You inspire me to cling to a sense of urgency and hope more than you will ever know. This one goes out to you guys.www.youtube.com/watch