Fic: Howl
Title: Howl
Author: Kairi (posted at the_castle)
Universe/Series: ST: Reboot; very vague K/S but can totally be read as gen
Rating: Adult; R for violence
Word count: 8,977
Genre: Action/adventure, angst, horror, H/C
Warnings: Brief but graphic depictions of violence and death
Summary: On an away mission, Kirk and Spock encounter a race of shockingly familiar aliens. Even stranger is the way they greet Spock with open arms. Of course, everything goes straight to hell after that. Berzerker!Spock.
Betas: My wonderful and esteemed betas & consults for this fic were Canis_takahari and tymsha; latenightarting and jou also lent their thoughtful opinions, and leupagus kindly allowed me to bug her with a few last-minute questions. THANKS LADIES!
A/N: I wrote this during a 2-week period in which I was sick and in horrible pain. My comfort "food" when I feel like shit is suspense-stuff, like "Aliens" or Stephen King novels. So I took a break from my Big Bang and wrote a Reboot fic in that vein. I'm actually really pleased with how it turned out, despite the amount of pain medication taken during its writing.
With the metallic tang of blood and the sour bite of fear sitting heavy on the back of his tongue, his lungs burning for air that didn't contain quite enough oxygen, Jim Kirk ran.
The designer of Starfleet standard-issue black boots, Terran human model, had been commissioned to account for a number of factors. Starfleet personnel were often required to be on their feet for hours and hours at a time, and to be prepared for a variety of situations, and their footwear had to allow for that. The chemically-sterile air and floor of any space-faring vessel was one thing, but alien planets with a mind-boggling range of conditions (pools of hydrochloric acid, burning sands, and plant life whose sap was corrosive to humanoid skin, to name just a few of the documented threats) also had to be accounted for. The nu-leather black boots had to provide the wearer with a combination of protection and comfort, as capable of shielding from unknown chemicals as it was conducive to running for one's life in them.
One thing they were not designed for was long-distance running. If he ever made it back to good ol' Terra (or hell, even to the ship), Kirk was going to send a little note informing Starfleet of their oversight. Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would advise them to invest in working goddamn comm-units instead.
His entire body hurt, but distant still, like observing someone else's drama. Kirk was running high on endorphins, topped off with one of Bones's special concoctions designed with Jim Kirk's allergy-prone physiology in mind. It was a special epi that Bones always sent him on away missions with, concealed in a thin, nigh-unbreakable tube that hid in a slim pocket in the interior lining of his boot. The hypo contained a broad-spectrum antihistamine, paired with cocktail of neural stimulants, anti-inflammatories, and pain-suppressors, meant to keep your fool ass alive long enough for me to get to you to save it, according to one very grumpy country doctor. Kirk knew it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing into an incoherent pile of bloody bones from pain.
He'd popped himself with the hypo back when the blisters had first started to hurt, knowing his time was short. Since then, by his count, seven blisters had formed, swelled, and burst on his feet, the skin chafed by running long miles in shoes not meant for it. Three on one foot and four on the other, respectively. He could feel what he suspected was blood, seeping into the poly-cotton fiber of his socks, but the pain had no hold yet, no teeth.
The bite would come all too soon. Hot agony would rip his feet open, forcing him to his hands and knees, and then it would be over. The chemicals were doing their work, but Kirk was no distance-runner. He worked out, sure, probably more than anyone else on Enterprise, and he sparred religiously in order to keep in what Bones called "fighting shape," but he was not built for this. Kirk hadn't run more than four, five miles at a time since Enterprise had left dry-dock on Earth. Lt. Uhura, now-she could run all night and day, tireless on those long graceful runner's legs of hers, and no one would ever catch her, maybe not even the mindless thing that followed behind Kirk now.
The breath stuck in Kirk's throat as this thought ran through his mind, and he shoved it aside, dodging around it as smoothly as he avoided the chunks of rock that lay scattered across the ground. To trip on either meant a painful spill, a fall he might not be able to pick himself back up from.
More troubling right now were the spasms in his legs that came and went, threatening to cripple him if they got any more severe. He'd managed to walk each one off thus far, and it wasn't even that they hurt, not through the uppers keeping him going, but Kirk could still feel the weakness and the way the muscles didn't want to work. The repetitive motion of running the exact same speed for coming up on three fucking hours was taking its toll.
A rock under his foot turned, and Kirk stumbled, the endless rhythm he'd set up breaking momentarily as he wobbled, almost fell. He caught his balance at the last moment, staggering as his forward momentum caught up with him, sucking in an all-too-ragged breath. He knew with the grim certainty of a condemned man that if he fell, he wouldn't be able to get up again. And he could not stop yet, so far from daylight, from safety. Somewhere overhead, Enterprise swam in her graceful orbit, waiting for the horizon-line to proceed past where her captain and away team were stranded planet-side, waiting for the sunlight to return and allow them communication once more.
Not that any of the away team were left, save for Kirk. Kirk, and the hunter that followed him that once upon a time had been First Officer Spock.
Kirk steadied himself, fixing his eyes on the distant mountains. Ahead of him and on all sides, the knee-high grass swayed and bobbed in the faint night wind, limned silver and blue and witch-wood green by the haunting canopy of lights overhead. The electromagnetic storm that hung like a great shimmering necklace above him looked for all the worlds like the Aurora Borealis of Terra's far north, but Jim could spare neither his eyes nor his admiration for its graceful, haunting song right now.
He wanted so badly to give in to the call, to lay himself down in the soft, whispering grass and fall asleep with the unearthly light kissing his skin. Death had never been so inviting. Sleep would welcome him with open arms, and maybe he wouldn't even wake up-maybe death would be swift. It wasn't as if a man lived very long after having his rib cage cracked open and his heart torn out.
Behind him, far off, something cried out-a wild animal, screaming its pain and challenge to the silver lights above. It was impossible to tell how far off the noise was; it could have been a few hundred yards, or three miles. The noise cut off abruptly mid-cry, swallowed by the soft night wind whispering through the grass.
Kirk fixed his eyes on the mountains in the distance and kept running.
* * * * *
They're Vulcans, is the thing. Or used to be, a long long time ago.
Jim can hardly believe it, and he'll bet his rank as captain that Spock is having a much harder time with it, but there's no mistaking the proud, upswept eyebrows, or the gracefully-pointed ears. Like Spock, their eyes are all the color of dark, bitter chocolate, but there the resemblance ends, because they greet the away team with wide but wary smiles, their group fanning out loosely to surround Jim and his team. Their leader approaches alone, one long-fingered hand gripping a weapon that Jim's rambling encyclopedic brain recognizes as a fucking trident, like warriors out of some long-ago Earth fable, Triton rising from the water. The Vulcan (and he must be Vulcan; Jim just doesn't know how, yet) even looks like the lost god might have, with hair tumbling wild and thick from his temples almost to his waist, clad in green, skillfully-made clothes that are nevertheless lightyears from the dark and somber robes Jim remembers from every single Vulcan he's ever fucking encountered, Spock's "uncle" "Selek" included.
Spock steps forward, hand raised in the ta'al, and greets them in High Vulcan. The reaction is immediate: the entire group freezes for a moment, and then the leader's face ripples with shock, his eyes wide, verdant spots of color high on those arching cheekbones. He raises his trident, shouting something that Jim doesn't recognize, and then he does the unthinkable-he steps forward, throwing his weapon to the ground, and drops to his knees in front of Spock like a man in the presence of unexpected royalty. The gesture is repeated by all the others, and suddenly the away team finds itself surrounded by Altarans on their hands and knees, foreheads pressed to the ground.
Jim feels like he should have known then that something was wrong, but how could he? Later, research into the annals of Vulcan history will conclude, or guess, that they are in fact Vulcans, descendants of one of the earliest space-faring missions, that a ship crash-landed on this planet and some of the crew survived. That the proud, desert-bred people would find a way to survive is not a surprise, for Altara VI is nowhere near as harsh as Vulcan; that they never managed to regain spaceflight is more puzzling, but still not unheard of in similar situations.
But what truly blows Jim's mind is the discovery that these far-flung cousins of his quiet, deeply passionate First Officer have lost something far more shocking than spaceflight: they have lost their telepathy. Spock, of course, is the one who tells him this, confiding it in a hurried conversation as they follow the leader (Kivaren, his name is) back to a moderate-sized village. Jim can't quite understand or speak the dialect of Vulcan this planet's people use, but Spock can, and does. Jim can tell that Spock hasn't quite processed the staggering reality of what they've discovered, and Jim can't blame him, but they're having enough trouble just keeping track of what's going on, because their translators go to hell right around the time all the rest of their electronics do.
It's an hour after the sun has set that they finally reach the village, and Jim pauses to check in with the ship. To his dismay, he can barely get a connection with Scotty, who tells Jim in short, desperate bursts of static that an ion storm is growing, kicked up by unexpected solar wind as the planet rotates away from its star. Scotty is in the middle of warning Jim that he isn't sure he'll be able to reach or transport them through the storm when he cuts out altogether, Jim's comm unit spitting static at him like an angry viper.
Later-as he runs, a stitch climbing relentlessly up his side, his brain tumbling uselessly inside his skull like a broken washing machine recycling the dirty water over and over again-Jim will recognize that all of them made the mistake of trusting the Altarans implicitly. Because they looked and acted like Vulcans, albeit fur-clad, astonishingly low-tech ones. The only exception to this, perhaps, is Spock, who seems to positively radiate anxiety-or so Jim thinks, anyway. Others on Enterprise may think the ship's First Officer is unemotional, but they've been listening to gossip instead of really trying to read him.
But they're escorted into the village by an honor guard, and the celestial light show is already starting overhead, and Jim is too busy trying to get Spock to extract an answer about the ion storm to pay attention to anything else. With their translators out, it's only Spock who can communicate with their hosts at all, and it's still Vulcan that they speak, but an archaic, hard-to-follow version that Jim can't understand. And so he doesn't immediately notice how empty the village seems, how the squat quonset huts are utterly devoid of women or children, though signs of life are evident all around: toys abandoned in front of doorways, chimneys still smoking faintly, as if the fires inside were abandoned quite suddenly.
As if all the occupants had decided to clear out in a hurry.
* * * * *
Pain cut through Kirk's aimless ruminations like a hot knife, and he cried out, crumpling almost in two and clutching at his side. The stitch in his guts, which he'd been keeping at bay for the better part of an hour, was now threatening to cripple him completely. Kirk slowed reluctantly to a walk, hobbling for a good thirty seconds as he tried to ease the pain.
All around him, the night-time face of Altara VI seemed to glow, basking in the full-blown glory of the overhead lights. Kirk had never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life. He wondered, without wholly absorbing the idea, whether the lights of Altara VI would be the last thing he'd ever see. The thought sparked like an escaped firecracker in his mind, flaring brightly and then shooting off into the dark, gone without a trace.
Gotta keep it together, he thought vaguely. But even as he tried to marshall his errant thoughts, various parts of his body raised their voices in complaints: a nasty twinge here, the burn of overworked muscle there. Shit, his medication was starting to wear off. Kirk guessed he had perhaps another thirty minutes before he was completely on his own, physiologically speaking.
The thought scared him, and his mind jittered around like a man driving an old, busted-up car; for a moment he couldn't think how long he'd been running, or why he was even running like this at all, long after he'd escaped the... the... Kirk cast back, trying to recall what the fuck he thought he was doing, heading out into the wild like this-the ship, he thought, have to get to daylight so Enterprise can help us-
That was it. He was running... east, he thought, or at least in the direction the sun was going to rise. Down here, he was alone and weaponless, his phaser lost at some point he couldn't even remember. He couldn't defend himself at all against-Kirk's mind veered away again, and without even realizing it he winced, a body-wide clench to brace against that fearful idea that he could not quite look at.
Run, whispered a voice in the basement of his conscious mind, a voice he didn't recognize. If he catches up, it's over. Nothing existed now but that thought, the imperative to cover as much ground as possible, to keep moving and not look back.
Kirk took a deep breath, steadying himself, and slowly increased his speed again until he was moving at rate slightly faster than his previous run. He wouldn't last as long at this speed, but he didn't have that much time left, anyway, and his muscles would give out if he didn't change his rhythm. Ahead of him, the outline of the mountains were lit faintly by the starlight and the aurora. Behind him, something Kirk could not let himself think of followed him across the long miles of open grasslands. Kirk bent his head and kept running.
* * * * *Everyone is gathered around the fire, Spock and Kivaren at the very center of the group, Jim and the other members of the away team perhaps ten feet behind him. Spock had told Jim that this was some kind of important ritual being held in honor of their visitors, and Jim had taken him at his word-they're in a precarious position, now that they're cut off from their ship, and with Vulcans endangered as a species, an entire planet of close relations is too precious a resource to pass up. Jim's not terribly comfortable with the situation, but he has to make a call, and he decides to go along with it.
It's the wrong call.
Kivaren has been chanting and gesturing for several minutes now, and the unease has been growing in Jim's stomach like an ulcer. He doesn't like the way the other Altarans have gathered themselves around his away team; they're surrounded, now, and all eyes are fixed on Kivaren and Spock at the center of the circle. Jim doesn't like the weapons held in each Altaran's hand, either, and his palm itches to close around his phaser, but he doesn't want to do that, not yet. Nothing hostile has happened yet.
The chanting stops, abruptly, and Kivaren steps into Spock's personal space, both palms out. In the combined light of the fire and the aurora overhead, Spock and Kivaren look unreal, dreamlike. Kivaren shouts, and turns, throwing a handful of leaves into the fire. Instantly smoke billows up, the fire burning green and blue like the aurora, and Jim smells something sweet and cloying on the air. There's a moment that seems to stretch and elongate endlessly, like a piece of caramel pulled out to the barest string, as Jim watches Spock rear back from the sudden burst of smoke. In that moment, Jim seems the flatness of desperation in Spock's eyes, a flash of something shocked and then afraid, a struggle that lasts for a handful of seconds, no more. And then the moment snaps, and Spock staggers, his mouth falling open, and Jim knows that something is wrong, something is extremely fucking wrong, and then it's way too late.
Someone is yanking on Jim's arm, pulling him back and away from the fire, and the grip on his arm is like iron. Shouting erupts around him, the Altarans rushing forward as Spock screams, the noise a sound of pure animal fury. An Altaran has Jim's arms pinned behind his back as he drags Jim away from the sudden free-for-all that's broken out, and Jim is shouting, too, but he can't make anything out and then-
And then an Altaran tumbles roughly to the silver grass in front of him, green ichor gushing from the frayed edges of flesh where his shoulder used to be, a stained bone-fragment poking out of a lump of meat. Jim stumbles to the ground, falling hard by the Altaran's torso, white shock the only thing keeping his screams down as the sight of those dead, staring eyes. By the time he's scrambled to his feet, the screaming is piercing, and he turns to see a blue-and-black blur as Spock rips into another Altaran, his lips twisted back in a vicious snarl, eyes glittering black points in his face. All of Jim's strength leaves him like water draining from a broken glass as he watches Spock smash the Altaran's face, his fist a fast-moving green smear as it shatters bone with a sickening crunch. The Altaran is already dead by the time Spock drops him and turns away.
"SPOCK!" Jim shouts, and Spock's head snaps around at the sound. Jim recoils as Spock's gaze finds his, because there is no thought or answer in those dark eyes, like black coals lodged in empty sockets. The momentary distraction is long enough for one of the Altarans to bowl Spock over, and Spock bellows as he goes down under the weight of three men. Jim's taken three steps when two of them go flying back from where Spock went down, Spock rising with one hand oh god oh my god Spock NO! buried in the chest cavity of the third, the other gripping the doomed Altaran's shoulder. Jim draws up hard, his heart jack-hammering in his chest, his gorge rising in his throat.
The noise around him seems to cut out momentarily, as though someone has turned the volume all the way down as Jim's focus narrows to the scene just in front of him. Spock's elbow jerks back, as if something has given way, and the Altaran's head lolls on his neck like a rag-doll. Spock releases his grip on the dead man's shoulder, and the body crumples to the ground with a horrible noise like a sack of wet garbage hitting pavement, Jim tasting ashes as he stares at the bloody, glistening lump of flesh in Spock's hand. The lump pulses twice, arrhythmically, and then ceases altogether. Jim suddenly can't breathe.
Spock turns towards him then, still clutching his grisly prize, and all the sound comes roaring back into Jim's ears, and with it comes a faint voice, not from outside but from within, Spock's voice, and it says-
Run, Jim.
* * * * *
Out there in the darkness, something yowled, breaking Kirk's concentration. He stumbled once, and as his foot came down his entire body seemed to spasm in sudden pain. "Fuck! Fuckity fuckshit fuck-"
He caught himself, but barely, forcing himself to pick up the pace a bit even as the left side of his body flared in protest, pain shooting all the way up his leg like a line of hot metal embedded in his skin. The stitch in his side was getting worse. If Kirk had to guess, he would wager that what chemicals still lingered in his blood were being swiftly overpowered by the build-up of lactic acid; certainly they weren't doing much to dull the flares of pain each time his feet touched ground, the slip-shove of his abraded skin rubbing against the insides of his boots. He wanted badly to stop, walk it off, but that wild cry had been entirely too close for comfort.
Kirk's gaze cut rapidly across the plains in front of him, alighting on a scrubby copse of trees perhaps 100 yards away, ahead and slightly to the right. They looked like trees, anyway, the lowest branches just a foot or so above Kirk's head, green-gold leaves swaying in the wind, and at this moment it was any port in a storm. Kirk sped up, biting down on the inside of his cheek against the steadily increasing agony in his feet and the burn of muscles in his legs and sides. Behind him, the creature yowled again, louder this time and nearer. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck faster faster don't look back don't turn around go go go-
He was running flat-out now, lungs heaving like a bellows, the steady wind across the plains blowing directly into his face. Over the thunder of his heart, he could hear the rhythmic tattoo of something running, behind him and to the left, and getting closer by the second. The trees were only fifty yards away, now forty, now thirty. The wind died off. His feet were on fire, like running on white-hot nails, his heart was going to beat out of his chest, his muscles clenched and seized. Any second the thing was going to jump him and rip into him, tear his head off like a cat with a mouse. The tree rushed up to meet him and Kirk bolted directly for the trunk, ricocheting off it like a man doing a stunt, lunging for the branches over head as he used his momentum to boost himself up.
He still almost didn't make it. Kirk heard a scream of fury, felt something graze the back of his neck, and then strips of red fire opened down his back as the creature's claws cut through his uniform and into his skin. The sudden pain was enough to help him scramble all the way up, heaving himself over and fully onto the tree-branch, limbs out of range of the animal below.
Kirk just lay there for a few moments, wheezing into the curiously soft bark of the tree, shaking all over. Then it occurred to him that he didn't know for certain that the thing couldn't jump, and he took a few seconds to scoot himself back, deeper into the tree, which he now saw had a cavity in the center where the branches all reached out from the trunk, forming a bowl large enough for a man to lay down in. He half-crawled, half-fell into this little alcove, kicking aside a sticky clump of twigs as he did so, then eased himself close enough to the edge to peer over.
He was instantly glad he hadn't looked behind him before he'd gotten to the tree. The thing crouched on the ground looked like the bastard offspring of an Earth lion and a goddamn Komodo dragon, easily six feet long from nose to tail and covered in milky green scales. It had a jaw that was almost as large as Kirk's head, and four yellow eyes set into its skull. All of them were tilted upwards, and when it saw Kirk's head poking out it opened its mouth (Kirk noted with a kind of horrified fascination that it seemed to have multiple rows of teeth, almost like a shark) and screamed again. All the hair on Kirk's body stood up at once, the scratches on his back throbbing in a kind of painful sympathy.
"Fuck," he muttered, voice hoarse in his own ears. He eased himself back down into the tree, buried his face in his arm, and tried to ignore the hot sting of tears in his eyes.
* * * * *
So hot. Everything burns: his skin, his eyes, the muscles of his face and mouth, his lungs, his blood in his veins. The rage has consumed everything else, hazing all he sees or thinks or feels to the rust-red of copper. Nothing remains but the riot in his skin, the bloody scarlet of madness and the heat of Vulcan's Forge eating away inside his skull. His enemies flee before him, their treachery laid bare, but their blood on his hands does nothing to cool the searing fire.
If he turns and stares at his hand, he thinks he can see the flesh crackling and peeling back from the bone, the edges turning black, charred into nothing by the heat of his own body, only to reappear again moments later, impossibly whole. Water-he has to find water, has to put out this fire somehow or he will-
Burn.
"FUCK!"
Kirk jerked upright, eyes flying open in shock. Black spots danced in his vision, like little leftover drops of poison blurring his ability to see clearly. He blinked several times in rapid succession, and slowly the dream (if that was what it was) faded, painful reality re-asserting itself.
Fuck, must've fallen asleep... Kirk rubbed his eyes, wincing at the pain in all his limbs, taking stock of the situation. He was still in the dusty bowl of branches, treed in the middle of a nowhere plain, miles of grassland stretching out in every direction. It was still night, and-he crawled to the edge of the tree-branches to confirm this last-there was still an alien predator right out of his nightmares waiting for him at the foot of the tree, just in case he'd had any crazy thoughts about wanting to come down sooner or later. Awesome. So good to know that Starfleet wasn't lying about all the "excitement" of exploring new worlds.
Now that he was awake again, Kirk was astonished that he'd ever been able to drift off in the first place. He hurt. His legs and sides ached, his mouth was drier than the goddamn Mojave desert, his lower back felt like someone had shoved several pieces of splintered wood into his spine, the rest of his back throbbed from the long scratches that predator had torn in his skin, and he felt so wrung-out he wasn't entirely sure he'd be able to climb down out of the tree even if the freakish spawn of Simba and Godzilla wasn't waiting at the bottom for him-to say nothing of the hot mess his feet had become. Kirk didn't even want to take off his boots to examine the situation; it wasn't as if he could do anything to alleviate the pain, and once he got the boots off, it would be a fucking trial to get them back on until he had some pain killers in him. Might as well leave 'em on, especially in case he had to do any more walking.
Experimentally, Kirk got to his feet-only to crumple almost instantly to his hands and knees again, gasping at the flares of pain in his feet, white-hot jags like tiny pieces of hot coal lodged in his skin. Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was-this was not good. Okay. Okay. He was okay. He was not going to panic, dammit.
Breathe, Jim. You're not dead; your ship is waiting in orbit, and for the moment, you're safe. Kirk took a deep breath, then let it out slow. He squirmed around until he was sitting on his ass again, and peered up at the sky, trying to judge what time of day it was. He didn't think he'd slept that long, no more than thirty or forty minutes-just long enough to stiffen up, apparently. Off in the distance (he wanted to say "east," but to be honest Kirk wasn't certain that the sun rose in the east on this planet) he thought he detected a faint lightening.... but the shimmering faerie lights overhead made it impossible to tell.
They were beautiful, Kirk had to admit, but it was difficult to appreciate them at the moment. After one more futile attempt to contact Enterprise and being greeted with only the expected burst of static, Kirk sat back, staring out at the plains, and was forced to admit that he was stuck. Worse, he didn't precisely know how or why he'd ended up out here like this, alone. He simply could not remember. And that scared him badly.
Kirk remembered the Altaran's leader, Kivaren, leading everyone present in the ceremony supposedly honoring their visiting guests. He remembered Spock standing in the center of the stone ring, staring into the fire, and the billows of green and blue smoke that blew up into Spock's face from the leaves the Altarans had thrown into the fire. And he remembered the Altarans surrounding Spock, remembered Kivaren and the others attacking his First Officer, and the way Spock had exploded into violence, like a bomb had gone off inside him. After that, everything got a little... hazy.
Spock screams, and there is no intelligence in that noise-it is the noise of an animal enraged, a creature bent on the killer instinct, the sound of a predator. He turns and fixes his gaze on Jim again, and it's as if the weight of Spock's eyes triggers something, because once more comes the impulse to RUN!, but louder this time, impossible to ignore. It blots out all else, and Jim is turning, scrambling, dashing madly into the night-
Kirk snarled, burying his hands in his short hair and pulling uselessly at it, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to cudgel his brain into working. What the fuck was that? Where did it come from? He would never, never leave Spock, never leave any of his team to fend for themselves, so how the hell did this happen? But even as he asked himself the question, he felt a whisper of something at the back of his mind, the barest flicker of thought, like a bird-wing brushing him in the midst of taking flight . He felt the echo of heat, as a man who holds his hands out to a fire can feel the warmth licking at his palms, though the flames do not touch him.
Spock had been following him this whole time, was closing in on him now. It was Spock's voice in his mind, telling him to run; Spock's burning madness invading his brain just now when Kirk had drifted off to sleep. Kirk knew it down to the core of his being, a bone-deep certainty that he no more questioned than he would the urge to eat, or sleep. He didn't know how, exactly, but that didn't change the essential truth of the knowledge.
Of course, that didn't really answer the question of what the fuck would happen when his First finally caught him up. Kirk just had to hope that the distance he'd put between them had given Spock enough time to overcome whatever insanity had taken him over. Even at his best, Kirk would stand no chance against Spock in a fair fight with no weapons; in his current condition he might as well fling himself to the ground and let the cat-thing have its way with him as try to best Spock in hand-to-hand. Kirk only hoped it wouldn't come to that.
A noise from down below stirred him from his brooding, and Kirk dragged himself to the edge again, peering cautiously out from the tree. The felinoid had turned its back on Kirk's tree, the spiky tip of its tail twitching back and forth over its hindquarters. Kirk thought that if the thing had actually had fur, it would be raised in hackles down its back right now; it held its head low, muscles rippling under its scales like buttered silk, all four eyes fixed on some point on the prairie that Kirk couldn't make out. A low rumble cut the quiet of the night, and Kirk realized abruptly that the felinoid was growling-it sounded like the damn thing had a motor hidden in its ribcage somewhere. Kirk thought of Delta Vega and swallowed hard.
"Scotty, if you managed to miss predators the size of houses during your planet-wide lifeform scan, I am going to haunt the shit out of your miserable drunk ass," Kirk muttered. But though the predator that came over the rise was both deadlier and meaner than the thing that waited for Kirk at the foot of the tree, it came not on four legs but on two, came not with an animal scream but with a horrible silence that promised so much worse.
It was Spock.
Kirk's breath stuck in his throat like a piece of bone. If it weren't for his black Starfleet trousers and the torn remnants of his Science blues, Spock would have been nigh unrecognizable. Spock's shirt was so ripped that it was a wonder any of it hung on at all, but as he drew closer Kirk could see the way the shreds seemed to cling to him, as though they were wet, sticky with some dark substance. One sleeve was completely gone, exposing a pale arm smeared here and there with green blood. The normally immaculate black hair was matted, sticking out in uneven clumps. From this distance his eyes were nothing but black holes, reflecting no light or sanity back to the watcher.
But it was the way Spock moved that had Kirk shrinking back automatically into the perceived safety of the tree, as though it offered any real protection from the figure stalking towards him across the wind-swept plains. Faster than a walk, more even and unhurried than a run, Spock was moving at a steady trot, but something about the deadly loping grace with which he came turned Kirk's flesh cold and clammy with fear, like being dropped into a pool of ice-cold water. There was no effort or strain whatsoever in his movements-but worse than that, there was nothing of Spock in his gait, nothing of his steadfast, gentle First Officer.
The felinoid below him growled again, louder this time, slinking forward. Spock slowed as he got closer, eyes fixed on the cat-thing that waited at the foot of the tree. Kirk couldn't help but tense up as he watched, fingers digging into the spongy tree bark under his hands. He tried to sit up, the movement arrested abruptly as a spasm of pain wracked his body. He sank again with a low groan, recognizing that he would do Spock more harm than good right now if he got down out of the tree. The knowledge didn't stop him from inching out along the tree-branch, preparing to get down (fall down, more like) and help Spock any way he could. Spock Spock Spock don't you fucking die on me don't you die on me goddamnit-
Kirk almost did fall out as Spock suddenly stopped, dropping into a crouch as the felinoid drew near. For a few seconds, nothing moved, nothing audible over the low whistle of the wind. Then the cat lunged, so fast Kirk didn't even have time to react, launching itself at Spock like a cheetah felling a wildebeest. Spock threw himself backwards at the same time, and for one horrible, suffocating moment Kirk thought the creature had gotten him, but the felinoid kept going, somer-saulting awkwardly head over tail, and Kirk saw now that Spock had used the creature's own momentum to throw it backwards, a foot planted in its stomach to help it on its way. Spock rolled smoothly to his feet, already going after the wildcat, and at that moment pain burst in Kirk's temples like the earth splitting open, so sharp he almost blacked out.
Reality slid jaggedly sideways, images and sensations jostling violently for dominance in his head. Kirk crumpled backwards, rolling onto his side in the bowl of the tree in agony from the pain in his skull. Heat slid over his skin in slick, rolling waves, as though he were stricken with fever, but it burned inside him, too, behind his eyes, blocking his airway like a physical thing. Blind fury came with it, a violent assault, crashing over his consciousness and drowning him with the weight of it. Kill-destroy it kill it kill kill- Kirk screamed, clawing at his face, at his throat and eyes as he tried to put out the fire that was eating him alive. A spasm rolled through him, and he jerked, clubbing his head against a tree-branch, dazing himself momentarily. He went limp at the bottom of the basin for a few moments, struggling to simply stay conscious.
He managed to claw himself upright again perhaps ten seconds later, gasping for air. He crawled to the edge of the basin, still struggling to keep his grip on reality, and immediately wished he'd stayed down. Spock was rolling on the ground with the wild-cat, and it was screaming, thrashing around as Spock grappled with it. Spock had managed to get on top of it somehow, Spock's chest against the felinoid's back, away from the deadly claws and teeth, and Kirk saw now that Spock was trying to choke it, to cut off its airway. As Kirk watched, Spock snarled, twisting his arm around and under the snapping jaws, and with a sickening crack! that Kirk could hear even twenty yards away, Spock snapped the thing's neck. The felinoid went limp under him. Kirk felt bile rise in the back of his throat at the savage joy that sang through him in response, an emotion he knew came not from himself, but from the figure that now rose to his feet, turning the weight of that black stare on Kirk.
Kirk shrank back, shaking all over. He'd seen more than his fair share of violence, both in the line of duty and before it, and more than once he'd contemplated the chances that he would be killed in action, but not like this. Not at the hands of his First. It had been almost four years since their cataclysmic fight in the wake of Vulcan's destruction, four years of slow, sometimes-painful construction of a strange and tenuous friendship, and somewhere in that process Kirk had come to cherish the relationship he and Spock had built together. That it could end like this...
This is the way the world ends, Kirk thought irrationally, scrambling backwards on the palms of his hands, his dread foul and heavy on the back of his tongue. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.
Spock's hand popped into sight, catching at the V the bottom of the tree-branches made, his head appearing moments later. He clambered neatly into Kirk's tree-nest, as effortless as breathing. The handful of seconds it took Spock to reach Kirk seemed to take forever, spun out like a piece of gossamer thread: Kirk saw, as if in slow motion, the way Spock's true brown eyes were now blown wide and black; the splatters of blood (green and reddish-brown) on his jaw, his hands, his chest; his mouth wide open and panting. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, his limbs heavy and useless as Spock loomed over him, reaching for him. There was no spark of recognition in those empty eyes.
"Spock," Kirk tried, his words garbled, barely-there. "Spock, don't, it's me, it's Jim. It's your captain. I'm-" Spock's fingers closed around his throat, and Kirk choked, his own hands flying to Spock's, trying in vain to pry them away as they closed around his airway. Spock bent over him, his grip tightening relentlessly, staring down at him as Kirk struggled and gasped and fought for air, his vision starting to go grey, the world swimming in and out of focus.
Spock, he thought helplessly, spots dancing in front of his eyes now. Kirk raised his hand, some stray impulse bending his touch towards Spock's face instead of the hands around his throat, fingertips sliding gently over the high plane of a cheekbone that once belonged to his friend. Spock jerked at the touch, eyes widening, and Kirk gagged as Spock's fingers tightened further, only to suddenly loosen. Kirk dropped to the floor of the basin, coughing and choking as air rushed into his lungs. Spock was staring down at him, eyes wide, planting his hands on either side of Kirk's shoulders. His face worked, mouth opening and closing like a man having a stroke. His pupils contracted and expanded, brown swallowing up the black, only to revert back within seconds. His lips moved: Jim, he mouthed, no sound coming out.
"Spock!" Kirk's lungs heaved for air, and he forced himself into a sitting position, reaching for Spock's face again, meaning to do God knew what. But Spock moved quicker. He grabbed Kirk's shoulder, slamming him back down to the floor, and Kirk cried out in pain. Spock's fingertips were already settling against Kirk's temple, his cheek and jaw, and before Kirk could even register what was happening, spectral fingers had dragged him under, and he was lost, he was-
burning, he is burning, he is burning alive. The fire in his blood is all-consuming, blotting out everything but the urge to hunt, to kill and tear and burn. And now Jim can hear that Spock is screaming, screaming inside his own head, screaming because his blood is boiling in his veins, because his telepathy is blown wide open, everything he can sense everything he can hear everything and everyone and they are all a threat he has to kill them has to stop it has to make it stop make it stop
make it stop
Spock! Jim cries, and there are no words. Spock cries back to him through the fire-storm, the sound of an animal in pain. Spock! Jim tries again, but he's stuck in Hell, and the inferno roars, threatening to smother him too, and he will never escape, he will burn and burn and burn. Jim recoils, desperately seeking some remnant of self, of Jim Kirk, and for just a moment he can taste salt: the sea.
(terra is a world of water, so much water, so deep and dark and cold, how can you live there?)
Again Spock cries, his sense thin and desperate and almost gone. Jim lurches blindly deeper into that inferno, a man running through the rooms of a burning house, shouting Spock's name, and suddenly Spock is here, Spock is clinging to him, Spock is drinking him in. The maelstrom batters at them, trying to drag them back down, but they turn their faces away, hiding cheek-to-cheek. It will not last; they will be lost again if they do not find refuge, and as Jim retreats he takes Spock with him, out of the fire and into the sea.
Don't leave me, Spock begs. I won't, Jim whispers, I swear, and they are running, the storm is tearing at them, trying to pull them back, to drag them down, and then they are running and they are sinking, not into fire and madness but into deep blue water. Down into the ocean, down into darkness, down into
into-
-sanctuary.
* * * * *
It was the singing that woke him, though he didn't know it at first.
Jim came awake slowly, drifting out of a sleep so deep it was like throwing years off himself to finally reach the surface. The first thing he was aware of was that he was lying on something hard and not particularly comfortable: the floor of the tree-nest, he realized slowly. Those were leaves overhead, swaying and bobbing gently in the wind. This was followed by the discovery that, though he was outside, he wasn't cold. Jim glanced down at the warm, heavy weight covering him, and observed with some surprise that Spock was out cold on his chest, his head pillowed just under Jim's clavicle.
Details of the night before began to trickle back then, the pleasant drowsiness vanishing as image after image replayed itself in Jim's mind. The ceremony that had wrought such a horrible change in Spock; the violence of the fight by the fire; the endless hours running on the plain... Now that he remembered all he'd been through, his body's various aches and injuries hurried to greet him, making sure he knew exactly how much pain he was going to be in for the next week, at least. But they still weren't as bad as the night before, though when he got up Jim suspected he would be in for some serious stiffness. But he had other things to think about, for the moment.
Jim stared at the top of Spock's head, noticing that his own arms were wrapped firmly around Spock's shoulders, and that Spock was clinging to him in sleep as though Jim was a pillow, or a much-loved stuffed animal. Spock's torso rose and fell in a gentle rhythm as he breathed, and the torn back of his uniform shirt was dappled with light shining in through the canopy of leaves.
It was morning, Jim realized. Or almost. He glanced to his right, out towards the distant mountains that were just visible from this angle. The sight that greeted him was so stunning that he caught his breath, a lump forming in his throat.
The sun was rising, the outline of the mountains positively glowing, the faintest hint of gold at the edges. Overhead, the cloudless sky was radiant with color, soft purples and blues and pinks that blended into each other like the most glorious painting ever dreamed of, colors so brilliant that Jim would have sworn they did not exist in nature were he not seeing it with his own eyes. Between him and the mountains ran the open plains, which seemed to ripple in the faint wind; in the soft light of the early morning, Jim could see that the grass was actually blue-green, not silver as it had looked the night before.
And now he finally realized he could hear what he could only describe as song, though it had no words; a faint, lilting sound like bells or pipes that rose and fell with the sighing of the wind. Jim couldn't say whether it was a trick of the wind through the grass, or some strange resonance with the remnants of the ion storm that was rapidly fading overhead, but the high, pure song sent a sweet thrill through him, gooseflesh breaking out on his arms, tears pricking in his eyes. It seemed (and this was ridiculous, Jim knew it was ridiculous, but that didn't break the illusion) that the mountains were singing, that the very ground beneath him had raised its voice to welcome the sun back.
It was impossible that he should wake to such serenity, such peaceful, simple joy. It didn't fit. Five of his men had died, and who knew how many Altarans, and worst of all it had been Spock who'd killed them, driven insane from whatever was in those leaves Kivaren had thrown into the fire. After the horror and madness of the night before, that such beauty could even exist, much less be waiting to greet him... it was wrong. And yet he couldn't tear his eyes away.
Jim found himself thinking of the earthquake that had hit San Francisco his second year at the Academy. San Francisco was a city given to quakes, of course, and as her history went, this one hadn't been bad, but Jim was a Midwestern boy, more used to twisters and summer thunderstorms, and the quake had frightened him badly. He'd been in the dorm, studying for his xenobiology final, when he'd looked up and seen the water in his glass rippling and shimmering. Next thing he knew, the desk he was sitting at was juttering and bouncing and rocking back and forth, and he'd actually fallen over backwards in his chair, whacking his head on the floor.
He'd managed to scramble to his feet, only to almost topple over again as the floor under him swayed and lurched like a ship at sea. Books had rattled off shelves, his bed had thrown the PADDs and shoes lying on it to the floor, and to his horror Jim could hear the very building around him groaning as it buckled and swayed with the tremors of the earth. Jim had been scared blind, hiding in the doorframe to the bathroom with his fear throttling the air from his lungs until the worst of the shaking had passed. He'd been absolutely floored to learn that the quake had lasted for less than a minute, not quite fifty seconds. To Jim, it had felt endless, a nightmare that stretched forever and ever.
Classes had been canceled for a few days while the worst of the quake's damage had been cleaned up, and most everyone moved on with their lives, but Jim never really forgot about it. He'd had a hard time understanding how everyone but him had acted as though the quake just wasn't a big deal, that they could all go about their business as usual and not react to it at all. There was something wrong and impossible about the very earth betraying you like that, shaking and jumping and humping beneath you like a bucking horse trying to rid itself of its rider.
This night had been like that, for Spock. And for Jim. Something had broken open inside Spock, something buried so deep he hadn't even known it existed, much less that it could ever find its way out, and the very foundations of who he thought he was had been shattered, shaking underneath him as he tried to find his feet. And while it lasted, the shaking had been terrible.
But now it was over. Dear sweet Lord in Heaven, it was over at last. Jim guessed that when they got back up to the ship, Scotty would tell him that they'd been planetside for maybe ten hours, tops, while to Jim and Spock it had seemed like a slice of forever. But at least Spock wouldn't have to pick up the pieces alone. Jim would be here to help him. At this thought, Jim's arms tightened protectively around Spock, and his First Officer stirred, raising his head to peer groggily up at Jim.
"Captain," Spock said hoarsely, and stopped. Jim watched as Spock fought off the exhaustion that had claimed them after they'd both blacked out, could see the exact moment when memory of the previous night hit, because he could feel Spock tensing up against him.
"It's just Jim, Spock." Jim kept his arms where they were, tightening as Spock tried to sit up. Spock relented after a moment, staying where he was against Jim's chest, but the eyes peering up at Jim now were fraught with terrible anxiety, tension lining Spock's normally-impassive face.
"Jim," Spock said, and took a deep breath. Jim raised his hand, tentatively stroking the tip of a finger over Spock's cheekbone, and watched as Spock's eyes dilated rapidly, staring up at Jim.
"...You stayed," Spock said, finally. He sounded confused. Jim nodded.
"Told you I wouldn't leave you." Unbelievably, Jim felt himself smiling-a tired one, still, and weak, but real. Spots of color appeared high on Spock's cheeks in response.
"After what I have done, Captain-"
"I told you, it's Jim. And I meant it, Spock. I'll never leave you."
Spock said nothing at all for several moments, and down by Jim's hip, Jim could feel Spock's heart hammering wildly in his side, faster even than the normal speed for Vulcans. Jim kept his gaze locked on Spock's, blue eyes steady, and after a silence that stretched for almost a full minute, Spock finally moved. He reached around, finding one of Jim's hands with his own, and laced their fingers tightly together.
Behind Jim's eyes, a splash of color appeared, like flowers exploding into full bloom-there for a moment and then gone. Jim's breath hitched in his throat, squeezing Spock's hand tightly in his own. Outside the safety of their tree, the grasses hummed and sang, and the sun rose.
The comm unit at Jim's hip burst suddenly to life. "Cap'n Kirk, come in, Cap'n!" Scotty's voice buzzed and popped through the poor connection, and Jim let out the breath he had been holding. One hand still gripping Spock's firmly, he reached down with his other hand and grabbed the comm unit, flicking it open.
"Kirk here, Mr. Scott. Two to beam up. Tell Bones to stand by with a medical team."
"Aye aye, Cap'n." Jim shoved the comm unit back in his belt, his eyes never leaving Spock's blood-stained face as the world around them blurred to nothing. The last thing Jim was aware of as they left the surface of the planet was the feel of Spock's warm hand in his, and the faint, sweet song in his ears. Then they were gone.
Author: Kairi (posted at the_castle)
Universe/Series: ST: Reboot; very vague K/S but can totally be read as gen
Rating: Adult; R for violence
Word count: 8,977
Genre: Action/adventure, angst, horror, H/C
Warnings: Brief but graphic depictions of violence and death
Summary: On an away mission, Kirk and Spock encounter a race of shockingly familiar aliens. Even stranger is the way they greet Spock with open arms. Of course, everything goes straight to hell after that. Berzerker!Spock.
Betas: My wonderful and esteemed betas & consults for this fic were Canis_takahari and tymsha; latenightarting and jou also lent their thoughtful opinions, and leupagus kindly allowed me to bug her with a few last-minute questions. THANKS LADIES!
A/N: I wrote this during a 2-week period in which I was sick and in horrible pain. My comfort "food" when I feel like shit is suspense-stuff, like "Aliens" or Stephen King novels. So I took a break from my Big Bang and wrote a Reboot fic in that vein. I'm actually really pleased with how it turned out, despite the amount of pain medication taken during its writing.
With the metallic tang of blood and the sour bite of fear sitting heavy on the back of his tongue, his lungs burning for air that didn't contain quite enough oxygen, Jim Kirk ran.
The designer of Starfleet standard-issue black boots, Terran human model, had been commissioned to account for a number of factors. Starfleet personnel were often required to be on their feet for hours and hours at a time, and to be prepared for a variety of situations, and their footwear had to allow for that. The chemically-sterile air and floor of any space-faring vessel was one thing, but alien planets with a mind-boggling range of conditions (pools of hydrochloric acid, burning sands, and plant life whose sap was corrosive to humanoid skin, to name just a few of the documented threats) also had to be accounted for. The nu-leather black boots had to provide the wearer with a combination of protection and comfort, as capable of shielding from unknown chemicals as it was conducive to running for one's life in them.
One thing they were not designed for was long-distance running. If he ever made it back to good ol' Terra (or hell, even to the ship), Kirk was going to send a little note informing Starfleet of their oversight. Or maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would advise them to invest in working goddamn comm-units instead.
His entire body hurt, but distant still, like observing someone else's drama. Kirk was running high on endorphins, topped off with one of Bones's special concoctions designed with Jim Kirk's allergy-prone physiology in mind. It was a special epi that Bones always sent him on away missions with, concealed in a thin, nigh-unbreakable tube that hid in a slim pocket in the interior lining of his boot. The hypo contained a broad-spectrum antihistamine, paired with cocktail of neural stimulants, anti-inflammatories, and pain-suppressors, meant to keep your fool ass alive long enough for me to get to you to save it, according to one very grumpy country doctor. Kirk knew it was the only thing keeping him from collapsing into an incoherent pile of bloody bones from pain.
He'd popped himself with the hypo back when the blisters had first started to hurt, knowing his time was short. Since then, by his count, seven blisters had formed, swelled, and burst on his feet, the skin chafed by running long miles in shoes not meant for it. Three on one foot and four on the other, respectively. He could feel what he suspected was blood, seeping into the poly-cotton fiber of his socks, but the pain had no hold yet, no teeth.
The bite would come all too soon. Hot agony would rip his feet open, forcing him to his hands and knees, and then it would be over. The chemicals were doing their work, but Kirk was no distance-runner. He worked out, sure, probably more than anyone else on Enterprise, and he sparred religiously in order to keep in what Bones called "fighting shape," but he was not built for this. Kirk hadn't run more than four, five miles at a time since Enterprise had left dry-dock on Earth. Lt. Uhura, now-she could run all night and day, tireless on those long graceful runner's legs of hers, and no one would ever catch her, maybe not even the mindless thing that followed behind Kirk now.
The breath stuck in Kirk's throat as this thought ran through his mind, and he shoved it aside, dodging around it as smoothly as he avoided the chunks of rock that lay scattered across the ground. To trip on either meant a painful spill, a fall he might not be able to pick himself back up from.
More troubling right now were the spasms in his legs that came and went, threatening to cripple him if they got any more severe. He'd managed to walk each one off thus far, and it wasn't even that they hurt, not through the uppers keeping him going, but Kirk could still feel the weakness and the way the muscles didn't want to work. The repetitive motion of running the exact same speed for coming up on three fucking hours was taking its toll.
A rock under his foot turned, and Kirk stumbled, the endless rhythm he'd set up breaking momentarily as he wobbled, almost fell. He caught his balance at the last moment, staggering as his forward momentum caught up with him, sucking in an all-too-ragged breath. He knew with the grim certainty of a condemned man that if he fell, he wouldn't be able to get up again. And he could not stop yet, so far from daylight, from safety. Somewhere overhead, Enterprise swam in her graceful orbit, waiting for the horizon-line to proceed past where her captain and away team were stranded planet-side, waiting for the sunlight to return and allow them communication once more.
Not that any of the away team were left, save for Kirk. Kirk, and the hunter that followed him that once upon a time had been First Officer Spock.
Kirk steadied himself, fixing his eyes on the distant mountains. Ahead of him and on all sides, the knee-high grass swayed and bobbed in the faint night wind, limned silver and blue and witch-wood green by the haunting canopy of lights overhead. The electromagnetic storm that hung like a great shimmering necklace above him looked for all the worlds like the Aurora Borealis of Terra's far north, but Jim could spare neither his eyes nor his admiration for its graceful, haunting song right now.
He wanted so badly to give in to the call, to lay himself down in the soft, whispering grass and fall asleep with the unearthly light kissing his skin. Death had never been so inviting. Sleep would welcome him with open arms, and maybe he wouldn't even wake up-maybe death would be swift. It wasn't as if a man lived very long after having his rib cage cracked open and his heart torn out.
Behind him, far off, something cried out-a wild animal, screaming its pain and challenge to the silver lights above. It was impossible to tell how far off the noise was; it could have been a few hundred yards, or three miles. The noise cut off abruptly mid-cry, swallowed by the soft night wind whispering through the grass.
Kirk fixed his eyes on the mountains in the distance and kept running.
* * * * *
They're Vulcans, is the thing. Or used to be, a long long time ago.
Jim can hardly believe it, and he'll bet his rank as captain that Spock is having a much harder time with it, but there's no mistaking the proud, upswept eyebrows, or the gracefully-pointed ears. Like Spock, their eyes are all the color of dark, bitter chocolate, but there the resemblance ends, because they greet the away team with wide but wary smiles, their group fanning out loosely to surround Jim and his team. Their leader approaches alone, one long-fingered hand gripping a weapon that Jim's rambling encyclopedic brain recognizes as a fucking trident, like warriors out of some long-ago Earth fable, Triton rising from the water. The Vulcan (and he must be Vulcan; Jim just doesn't know how, yet) even looks like the lost god might have, with hair tumbling wild and thick from his temples almost to his waist, clad in green, skillfully-made clothes that are nevertheless lightyears from the dark and somber robes Jim remembers from every single Vulcan he's ever fucking encountered, Spock's "uncle" "Selek" included.
Spock steps forward, hand raised in the ta'al, and greets them in High Vulcan. The reaction is immediate: the entire group freezes for a moment, and then the leader's face ripples with shock, his eyes wide, verdant spots of color high on those arching cheekbones. He raises his trident, shouting something that Jim doesn't recognize, and then he does the unthinkable-he steps forward, throwing his weapon to the ground, and drops to his knees in front of Spock like a man in the presence of unexpected royalty. The gesture is repeated by all the others, and suddenly the away team finds itself surrounded by Altarans on their hands and knees, foreheads pressed to the ground.
Jim feels like he should have known then that something was wrong, but how could he? Later, research into the annals of Vulcan history will conclude, or guess, that they are in fact Vulcans, descendants of one of the earliest space-faring missions, that a ship crash-landed on this planet and some of the crew survived. That the proud, desert-bred people would find a way to survive is not a surprise, for Altara VI is nowhere near as harsh as Vulcan; that they never managed to regain spaceflight is more puzzling, but still not unheard of in similar situations.
But what truly blows Jim's mind is the discovery that these far-flung cousins of his quiet, deeply passionate First Officer have lost something far more shocking than spaceflight: they have lost their telepathy. Spock, of course, is the one who tells him this, confiding it in a hurried conversation as they follow the leader (Kivaren, his name is) back to a moderate-sized village. Jim can't quite understand or speak the dialect of Vulcan this planet's people use, but Spock can, and does. Jim can tell that Spock hasn't quite processed the staggering reality of what they've discovered, and Jim can't blame him, but they're having enough trouble just keeping track of what's going on, because their translators go to hell right around the time all the rest of their electronics do.
It's an hour after the sun has set that they finally reach the village, and Jim pauses to check in with the ship. To his dismay, he can barely get a connection with Scotty, who tells Jim in short, desperate bursts of static that an ion storm is growing, kicked up by unexpected solar wind as the planet rotates away from its star. Scotty is in the middle of warning Jim that he isn't sure he'll be able to reach or transport them through the storm when he cuts out altogether, Jim's comm unit spitting static at him like an angry viper.
Later-as he runs, a stitch climbing relentlessly up his side, his brain tumbling uselessly inside his skull like a broken washing machine recycling the dirty water over and over again-Jim will recognize that all of them made the mistake of trusting the Altarans implicitly. Because they looked and acted like Vulcans, albeit fur-clad, astonishingly low-tech ones. The only exception to this, perhaps, is Spock, who seems to positively radiate anxiety-or so Jim thinks, anyway. Others on Enterprise may think the ship's First Officer is unemotional, but they've been listening to gossip instead of really trying to read him.
But they're escorted into the village by an honor guard, and the celestial light show is already starting overhead, and Jim is too busy trying to get Spock to extract an answer about the ion storm to pay attention to anything else. With their translators out, it's only Spock who can communicate with their hosts at all, and it's still Vulcan that they speak, but an archaic, hard-to-follow version that Jim can't understand. And so he doesn't immediately notice how empty the village seems, how the squat quonset huts are utterly devoid of women or children, though signs of life are evident all around: toys abandoned in front of doorways, chimneys still smoking faintly, as if the fires inside were abandoned quite suddenly.
As if all the occupants had decided to clear out in a hurry.
* * * * *
Pain cut through Kirk's aimless ruminations like a hot knife, and he cried out, crumpling almost in two and clutching at his side. The stitch in his guts, which he'd been keeping at bay for the better part of an hour, was now threatening to cripple him completely. Kirk slowed reluctantly to a walk, hobbling for a good thirty seconds as he tried to ease the pain.
All around him, the night-time face of Altara VI seemed to glow, basking in the full-blown glory of the overhead lights. Kirk had never seen anything so beautiful in his entire life. He wondered, without wholly absorbing the idea, whether the lights of Altara VI would be the last thing he'd ever see. The thought sparked like an escaped firecracker in his mind, flaring brightly and then shooting off into the dark, gone without a trace.
Gotta keep it together, he thought vaguely. But even as he tried to marshall his errant thoughts, various parts of his body raised their voices in complaints: a nasty twinge here, the burn of overworked muscle there. Shit, his medication was starting to wear off. Kirk guessed he had perhaps another thirty minutes before he was completely on his own, physiologically speaking.
The thought scared him, and his mind jittered around like a man driving an old, busted-up car; for a moment he couldn't think how long he'd been running, or why he was even running like this at all, long after he'd escaped the... the... Kirk cast back, trying to recall what the fuck he thought he was doing, heading out into the wild like this-the ship, he thought, have to get to daylight so Enterprise can help us-
That was it. He was running... east, he thought, or at least in the direction the sun was going to rise. Down here, he was alone and weaponless, his phaser lost at some point he couldn't even remember. He couldn't defend himself at all against-Kirk's mind veered away again, and without even realizing it he winced, a body-wide clench to brace against that fearful idea that he could not quite look at.
Run, whispered a voice in the basement of his conscious mind, a voice he didn't recognize. If he catches up, it's over. Nothing existed now but that thought, the imperative to cover as much ground as possible, to keep moving and not look back.
Kirk took a deep breath, steadying himself, and slowly increased his speed again until he was moving at rate slightly faster than his previous run. He wouldn't last as long at this speed, but he didn't have that much time left, anyway, and his muscles would give out if he didn't change his rhythm. Ahead of him, the outline of the mountains were lit faintly by the starlight and the aurora. Behind him, something Kirk could not let himself think of followed him across the long miles of open grasslands. Kirk bent his head and kept running.
* * * * *Everyone is gathered around the fire, Spock and Kivaren at the very center of the group, Jim and the other members of the away team perhaps ten feet behind him. Spock had told Jim that this was some kind of important ritual being held in honor of their visitors, and Jim had taken him at his word-they're in a precarious position, now that they're cut off from their ship, and with Vulcans endangered as a species, an entire planet of close relations is too precious a resource to pass up. Jim's not terribly comfortable with the situation, but he has to make a call, and he decides to go along with it.
It's the wrong call.
Kivaren has been chanting and gesturing for several minutes now, and the unease has been growing in Jim's stomach like an ulcer. He doesn't like the way the other Altarans have gathered themselves around his away team; they're surrounded, now, and all eyes are fixed on Kivaren and Spock at the center of the circle. Jim doesn't like the weapons held in each Altaran's hand, either, and his palm itches to close around his phaser, but he doesn't want to do that, not yet. Nothing hostile has happened yet.
The chanting stops, abruptly, and Kivaren steps into Spock's personal space, both palms out. In the combined light of the fire and the aurora overhead, Spock and Kivaren look unreal, dreamlike. Kivaren shouts, and turns, throwing a handful of leaves into the fire. Instantly smoke billows up, the fire burning green and blue like the aurora, and Jim smells something sweet and cloying on the air. There's a moment that seems to stretch and elongate endlessly, like a piece of caramel pulled out to the barest string, as Jim watches Spock rear back from the sudden burst of smoke. In that moment, Jim seems the flatness of desperation in Spock's eyes, a flash of something shocked and then afraid, a struggle that lasts for a handful of seconds, no more. And then the moment snaps, and Spock staggers, his mouth falling open, and Jim knows that something is wrong, something is extremely fucking wrong, and then it's way too late.
Someone is yanking on Jim's arm, pulling him back and away from the fire, and the grip on his arm is like iron. Shouting erupts around him, the Altarans rushing forward as Spock screams, the noise a sound of pure animal fury. An Altaran has Jim's arms pinned behind his back as he drags Jim away from the sudden free-for-all that's broken out, and Jim is shouting, too, but he can't make anything out and then-
And then an Altaran tumbles roughly to the silver grass in front of him, green ichor gushing from the frayed edges of flesh where his shoulder used to be, a stained bone-fragment poking out of a lump of meat. Jim stumbles to the ground, falling hard by the Altaran's torso, white shock the only thing keeping his screams down as the sight of those dead, staring eyes. By the time he's scrambled to his feet, the screaming is piercing, and he turns to see a blue-and-black blur as Spock rips into another Altaran, his lips twisted back in a vicious snarl, eyes glittering black points in his face. All of Jim's strength leaves him like water draining from a broken glass as he watches Spock smash the Altaran's face, his fist a fast-moving green smear as it shatters bone with a sickening crunch. The Altaran is already dead by the time Spock drops him and turns away.
"SPOCK!" Jim shouts, and Spock's head snaps around at the sound. Jim recoils as Spock's gaze finds his, because there is no thought or answer in those dark eyes, like black coals lodged in empty sockets. The momentary distraction is long enough for one of the Altarans to bowl Spock over, and Spock bellows as he goes down under the weight of three men. Jim's taken three steps when two of them go flying back from where Spock went down, Spock rising with one hand oh god oh my god Spock NO! buried in the chest cavity of the third, the other gripping the doomed Altaran's shoulder. Jim draws up hard, his heart jack-hammering in his chest, his gorge rising in his throat.
The noise around him seems to cut out momentarily, as though someone has turned the volume all the way down as Jim's focus narrows to the scene just in front of him. Spock's elbow jerks back, as if something has given way, and the Altaran's head lolls on his neck like a rag-doll. Spock releases his grip on the dead man's shoulder, and the body crumples to the ground with a horrible noise like a sack of wet garbage hitting pavement, Jim tasting ashes as he stares at the bloody, glistening lump of flesh in Spock's hand. The lump pulses twice, arrhythmically, and then ceases altogether. Jim suddenly can't breathe.
Spock turns towards him then, still clutching his grisly prize, and all the sound comes roaring back into Jim's ears, and with it comes a faint voice, not from outside but from within, Spock's voice, and it says-
Run, Jim.
* * * * *
Out there in the darkness, something yowled, breaking Kirk's concentration. He stumbled once, and as his foot came down his entire body seemed to spasm in sudden pain. "Fuck! Fuckity fuckshit fuck-"
He caught himself, but barely, forcing himself to pick up the pace a bit even as the left side of his body flared in protest, pain shooting all the way up his leg like a line of hot metal embedded in his skin. The stitch in his side was getting worse. If Kirk had to guess, he would wager that what chemicals still lingered in his blood were being swiftly overpowered by the build-up of lactic acid; certainly they weren't doing much to dull the flares of pain each time his feet touched ground, the slip-shove of his abraded skin rubbing against the insides of his boots. He wanted badly to stop, walk it off, but that wild cry had been entirely too close for comfort.
Kirk's gaze cut rapidly across the plains in front of him, alighting on a scrubby copse of trees perhaps 100 yards away, ahead and slightly to the right. They looked like trees, anyway, the lowest branches just a foot or so above Kirk's head, green-gold leaves swaying in the wind, and at this moment it was any port in a storm. Kirk sped up, biting down on the inside of his cheek against the steadily increasing agony in his feet and the burn of muscles in his legs and sides. Behind him, the creature yowled again, louder this time and nearer. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck faster faster don't look back don't turn around go go go-
He was running flat-out now, lungs heaving like a bellows, the steady wind across the plains blowing directly into his face. Over the thunder of his heart, he could hear the rhythmic tattoo of something running, behind him and to the left, and getting closer by the second. The trees were only fifty yards away, now forty, now thirty. The wind died off. His feet were on fire, like running on white-hot nails, his heart was going to beat out of his chest, his muscles clenched and seized. Any second the thing was going to jump him and rip into him, tear his head off like a cat with a mouse. The tree rushed up to meet him and Kirk bolted directly for the trunk, ricocheting off it like a man doing a stunt, lunging for the branches over head as he used his momentum to boost himself up.
He still almost didn't make it. Kirk heard a scream of fury, felt something graze the back of his neck, and then strips of red fire opened down his back as the creature's claws cut through his uniform and into his skin. The sudden pain was enough to help him scramble all the way up, heaving himself over and fully onto the tree-branch, limbs out of range of the animal below.
Kirk just lay there for a few moments, wheezing into the curiously soft bark of the tree, shaking all over. Then it occurred to him that he didn't know for certain that the thing couldn't jump, and he took a few seconds to scoot himself back, deeper into the tree, which he now saw had a cavity in the center where the branches all reached out from the trunk, forming a bowl large enough for a man to lay down in. He half-crawled, half-fell into this little alcove, kicking aside a sticky clump of twigs as he did so, then eased himself close enough to the edge to peer over.
He was instantly glad he hadn't looked behind him before he'd gotten to the tree. The thing crouched on the ground looked like the bastard offspring of an Earth lion and a goddamn Komodo dragon, easily six feet long from nose to tail and covered in milky green scales. It had a jaw that was almost as large as Kirk's head, and four yellow eyes set into its skull. All of them were tilted upwards, and when it saw Kirk's head poking out it opened its mouth (Kirk noted with a kind of horrified fascination that it seemed to have multiple rows of teeth, almost like a shark) and screamed again. All the hair on Kirk's body stood up at once, the scratches on his back throbbing in a kind of painful sympathy.
"Fuck," he muttered, voice hoarse in his own ears. He eased himself back down into the tree, buried his face in his arm, and tried to ignore the hot sting of tears in his eyes.
* * * * *
So hot. Everything burns: his skin, his eyes, the muscles of his face and mouth, his lungs, his blood in his veins. The rage has consumed everything else, hazing all he sees or thinks or feels to the rust-red of copper. Nothing remains but the riot in his skin, the bloody scarlet of madness and the heat of Vulcan's Forge eating away inside his skull. His enemies flee before him, their treachery laid bare, but their blood on his hands does nothing to cool the searing fire.
If he turns and stares at his hand, he thinks he can see the flesh crackling and peeling back from the bone, the edges turning black, charred into nothing by the heat of his own body, only to reappear again moments later, impossibly whole. Water-he has to find water, has to put out this fire somehow or he will-
Burn.
"FUCK!"
Kirk jerked upright, eyes flying open in shock. Black spots danced in his vision, like little leftover drops of poison blurring his ability to see clearly. He blinked several times in rapid succession, and slowly the dream (if that was what it was) faded, painful reality re-asserting itself.
Fuck, must've fallen asleep... Kirk rubbed his eyes, wincing at the pain in all his limbs, taking stock of the situation. He was still in the dusty bowl of branches, treed in the middle of a nowhere plain, miles of grassland stretching out in every direction. It was still night, and-he crawled to the edge of the tree-branches to confirm this last-there was still an alien predator right out of his nightmares waiting for him at the foot of the tree, just in case he'd had any crazy thoughts about wanting to come down sooner or later. Awesome. So good to know that Starfleet wasn't lying about all the "excitement" of exploring new worlds.
Now that he was awake again, Kirk was astonished that he'd ever been able to drift off in the first place. He hurt. His legs and sides ached, his mouth was drier than the goddamn Mojave desert, his lower back felt like someone had shoved several pieces of splintered wood into his spine, the rest of his back throbbed from the long scratches that predator had torn in his skin, and he felt so wrung-out he wasn't entirely sure he'd be able to climb down out of the tree even if the freakish spawn of Simba and Godzilla wasn't waiting at the bottom for him-to say nothing of the hot mess his feet had become. Kirk didn't even want to take off his boots to examine the situation; it wasn't as if he could do anything to alleviate the pain, and once he got the boots off, it would be a fucking trial to get them back on until he had some pain killers in him. Might as well leave 'em on, especially in case he had to do any more walking.
Experimentally, Kirk got to his feet-only to crumple almost instantly to his hands and knees again, gasping at the flares of pain in his feet, white-hot jags like tiny pieces of hot coal lodged in his skin. Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was-this was not good. Okay. Okay. He was okay. He was not going to panic, dammit.
Breathe, Jim. You're not dead; your ship is waiting in orbit, and for the moment, you're safe. Kirk took a deep breath, then let it out slow. He squirmed around until he was sitting on his ass again, and peered up at the sky, trying to judge what time of day it was. He didn't think he'd slept that long, no more than thirty or forty minutes-just long enough to stiffen up, apparently. Off in the distance (he wanted to say "east," but to be honest Kirk wasn't certain that the sun rose in the east on this planet) he thought he detected a faint lightening.... but the shimmering faerie lights overhead made it impossible to tell.
They were beautiful, Kirk had to admit, but it was difficult to appreciate them at the moment. After one more futile attempt to contact Enterprise and being greeted with only the expected burst of static, Kirk sat back, staring out at the plains, and was forced to admit that he was stuck. Worse, he didn't precisely know how or why he'd ended up out here like this, alone. He simply could not remember. And that scared him badly.
Kirk remembered the Altaran's leader, Kivaren, leading everyone present in the ceremony supposedly honoring their visiting guests. He remembered Spock standing in the center of the stone ring, staring into the fire, and the billows of green and blue smoke that blew up into Spock's face from the leaves the Altarans had thrown into the fire. And he remembered the Altarans surrounding Spock, remembered Kivaren and the others attacking his First Officer, and the way Spock had exploded into violence, like a bomb had gone off inside him. After that, everything got a little... hazy.
Spock screams, and there is no intelligence in that noise-it is the noise of an animal enraged, a creature bent on the killer instinct, the sound of a predator. He turns and fixes his gaze on Jim again, and it's as if the weight of Spock's eyes triggers something, because once more comes the impulse to RUN!, but louder this time, impossible to ignore. It blots out all else, and Jim is turning, scrambling, dashing madly into the night-
Kirk snarled, burying his hands in his short hair and pulling uselessly at it, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to cudgel his brain into working. What the fuck was that? Where did it come from? He would never, never leave Spock, never leave any of his team to fend for themselves, so how the hell did this happen? But even as he asked himself the question, he felt a whisper of something at the back of his mind, the barest flicker of thought, like a bird-wing brushing him in the midst of taking flight . He felt the echo of heat, as a man who holds his hands out to a fire can feel the warmth licking at his palms, though the flames do not touch him.
Spock had been following him this whole time, was closing in on him now. It was Spock's voice in his mind, telling him to run; Spock's burning madness invading his brain just now when Kirk had drifted off to sleep. Kirk knew it down to the core of his being, a bone-deep certainty that he no more questioned than he would the urge to eat, or sleep. He didn't know how, exactly, but that didn't change the essential truth of the knowledge.
Of course, that didn't really answer the question of what the fuck would happen when his First finally caught him up. Kirk just had to hope that the distance he'd put between them had given Spock enough time to overcome whatever insanity had taken him over. Even at his best, Kirk would stand no chance against Spock in a fair fight with no weapons; in his current condition he might as well fling himself to the ground and let the cat-thing have its way with him as try to best Spock in hand-to-hand. Kirk only hoped it wouldn't come to that.
A noise from down below stirred him from his brooding, and Kirk dragged himself to the edge again, peering cautiously out from the tree. The felinoid had turned its back on Kirk's tree, the spiky tip of its tail twitching back and forth over its hindquarters. Kirk thought that if the thing had actually had fur, it would be raised in hackles down its back right now; it held its head low, muscles rippling under its scales like buttered silk, all four eyes fixed on some point on the prairie that Kirk couldn't make out. A low rumble cut the quiet of the night, and Kirk realized abruptly that the felinoid was growling-it sounded like the damn thing had a motor hidden in its ribcage somewhere. Kirk thought of Delta Vega and swallowed hard.
"Scotty, if you managed to miss predators the size of houses during your planet-wide lifeform scan, I am going to haunt the shit out of your miserable drunk ass," Kirk muttered. But though the predator that came over the rise was both deadlier and meaner than the thing that waited for Kirk at the foot of the tree, it came not on four legs but on two, came not with an animal scream but with a horrible silence that promised so much worse.
It was Spock.
Kirk's breath stuck in his throat like a piece of bone. If it weren't for his black Starfleet trousers and the torn remnants of his Science blues, Spock would have been nigh unrecognizable. Spock's shirt was so ripped that it was a wonder any of it hung on at all, but as he drew closer Kirk could see the way the shreds seemed to cling to him, as though they were wet, sticky with some dark substance. One sleeve was completely gone, exposing a pale arm smeared here and there with green blood. The normally immaculate black hair was matted, sticking out in uneven clumps. From this distance his eyes were nothing but black holes, reflecting no light or sanity back to the watcher.
But it was the way Spock moved that had Kirk shrinking back automatically into the perceived safety of the tree, as though it offered any real protection from the figure stalking towards him across the wind-swept plains. Faster than a walk, more even and unhurried than a run, Spock was moving at a steady trot, but something about the deadly loping grace with which he came turned Kirk's flesh cold and clammy with fear, like being dropped into a pool of ice-cold water. There was no effort or strain whatsoever in his movements-but worse than that, there was nothing of Spock in his gait, nothing of his steadfast, gentle First Officer.
The felinoid below him growled again, louder this time, slinking forward. Spock slowed as he got closer, eyes fixed on the cat-thing that waited at the foot of the tree. Kirk couldn't help but tense up as he watched, fingers digging into the spongy tree bark under his hands. He tried to sit up, the movement arrested abruptly as a spasm of pain wracked his body. He sank again with a low groan, recognizing that he would do Spock more harm than good right now if he got down out of the tree. The knowledge didn't stop him from inching out along the tree-branch, preparing to get down (fall down, more like) and help Spock any way he could. Spock Spock Spock don't you fucking die on me don't you die on me goddamnit-
Kirk almost did fall out as Spock suddenly stopped, dropping into a crouch as the felinoid drew near. For a few seconds, nothing moved, nothing audible over the low whistle of the wind. Then the cat lunged, so fast Kirk didn't even have time to react, launching itself at Spock like a cheetah felling a wildebeest. Spock threw himself backwards at the same time, and for one horrible, suffocating moment Kirk thought the creature had gotten him, but the felinoid kept going, somer-saulting awkwardly head over tail, and Kirk saw now that Spock had used the creature's own momentum to throw it backwards, a foot planted in its stomach to help it on its way. Spock rolled smoothly to his feet, already going after the wildcat, and at that moment pain burst in Kirk's temples like the earth splitting open, so sharp he almost blacked out.
Reality slid jaggedly sideways, images and sensations jostling violently for dominance in his head. Kirk crumpled backwards, rolling onto his side in the bowl of the tree in agony from the pain in his skull. Heat slid over his skin in slick, rolling waves, as though he were stricken with fever, but it burned inside him, too, behind his eyes, blocking his airway like a physical thing. Blind fury came with it, a violent assault, crashing over his consciousness and drowning him with the weight of it. Kill-destroy it kill it kill kill- Kirk screamed, clawing at his face, at his throat and eyes as he tried to put out the fire that was eating him alive. A spasm rolled through him, and he jerked, clubbing his head against a tree-branch, dazing himself momentarily. He went limp at the bottom of the basin for a few moments, struggling to simply stay conscious.
He managed to claw himself upright again perhaps ten seconds later, gasping for air. He crawled to the edge of the basin, still struggling to keep his grip on reality, and immediately wished he'd stayed down. Spock was rolling on the ground with the wild-cat, and it was screaming, thrashing around as Spock grappled with it. Spock had managed to get on top of it somehow, Spock's chest against the felinoid's back, away from the deadly claws and teeth, and Kirk saw now that Spock was trying to choke it, to cut off its airway. As Kirk watched, Spock snarled, twisting his arm around and under the snapping jaws, and with a sickening crack! that Kirk could hear even twenty yards away, Spock snapped the thing's neck. The felinoid went limp under him. Kirk felt bile rise in the back of his throat at the savage joy that sang through him in response, an emotion he knew came not from himself, but from the figure that now rose to his feet, turning the weight of that black stare on Kirk.
Kirk shrank back, shaking all over. He'd seen more than his fair share of violence, both in the line of duty and before it, and more than once he'd contemplated the chances that he would be killed in action, but not like this. Not at the hands of his First. It had been almost four years since their cataclysmic fight in the wake of Vulcan's destruction, four years of slow, sometimes-painful construction of a strange and tenuous friendship, and somewhere in that process Kirk had come to cherish the relationship he and Spock had built together. That it could end like this...
This is the way the world ends, Kirk thought irrationally, scrambling backwards on the palms of his hands, his dread foul and heavy on the back of his tongue. This is the way the world ends, this is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.
Spock's hand popped into sight, catching at the V the bottom of the tree-branches made, his head appearing moments later. He clambered neatly into Kirk's tree-nest, as effortless as breathing. The handful of seconds it took Spock to reach Kirk seemed to take forever, spun out like a piece of gossamer thread: Kirk saw, as if in slow motion, the way Spock's true brown eyes were now blown wide and black; the splatters of blood (green and reddish-brown) on his jaw, his hands, his chest; his mouth wide open and panting. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, his limbs heavy and useless as Spock loomed over him, reaching for him. There was no spark of recognition in those empty eyes.
"Spock," Kirk tried, his words garbled, barely-there. "Spock, don't, it's me, it's Jim. It's your captain. I'm-" Spock's fingers closed around his throat, and Kirk choked, his own hands flying to Spock's, trying in vain to pry them away as they closed around his airway. Spock bent over him, his grip tightening relentlessly, staring down at him as Kirk struggled and gasped and fought for air, his vision starting to go grey, the world swimming in and out of focus.
Spock, he thought helplessly, spots dancing in front of his eyes now. Kirk raised his hand, some stray impulse bending his touch towards Spock's face instead of the hands around his throat, fingertips sliding gently over the high plane of a cheekbone that once belonged to his friend. Spock jerked at the touch, eyes widening, and Kirk gagged as Spock's fingers tightened further, only to suddenly loosen. Kirk dropped to the floor of the basin, coughing and choking as air rushed into his lungs. Spock was staring down at him, eyes wide, planting his hands on either side of Kirk's shoulders. His face worked, mouth opening and closing like a man having a stroke. His pupils contracted and expanded, brown swallowing up the black, only to revert back within seconds. His lips moved: Jim, he mouthed, no sound coming out.
"Spock!" Kirk's lungs heaved for air, and he forced himself into a sitting position, reaching for Spock's face again, meaning to do God knew what. But Spock moved quicker. He grabbed Kirk's shoulder, slamming him back down to the floor, and Kirk cried out in pain. Spock's fingertips were already settling against Kirk's temple, his cheek and jaw, and before Kirk could even register what was happening, spectral fingers had dragged him under, and he was lost, he was-
burning, he is burning, he is burning alive. The fire in his blood is all-consuming, blotting out everything but the urge to hunt, to kill and tear and burn. And now Jim can hear that Spock is screaming, screaming inside his own head, screaming because his blood is boiling in his veins, because his telepathy is blown wide open, everything he can sense everything he can hear everything and everyone and they are all a threat he has to kill them has to stop it has to make it stop make it stop
make it stop
Spock! Jim cries, and there are no words. Spock cries back to him through the fire-storm, the sound of an animal in pain. Spock! Jim tries again, but he's stuck in Hell, and the inferno roars, threatening to smother him too, and he will never escape, he will burn and burn and burn. Jim recoils, desperately seeking some remnant of self, of Jim Kirk, and for just a moment he can taste salt: the sea.
(terra is a world of water, so much water, so deep and dark and cold, how can you live there?)
Again Spock cries, his sense thin and desperate and almost gone. Jim lurches blindly deeper into that inferno, a man running through the rooms of a burning house, shouting Spock's name, and suddenly Spock is here, Spock is clinging to him, Spock is drinking him in. The maelstrom batters at them, trying to drag them back down, but they turn their faces away, hiding cheek-to-cheek. It will not last; they will be lost again if they do not find refuge, and as Jim retreats he takes Spock with him, out of the fire and into the sea.
Don't leave me, Spock begs. I won't, Jim whispers, I swear, and they are running, the storm is tearing at them, trying to pull them back, to drag them down, and then they are running and they are sinking, not into fire and madness but into deep blue water. Down into the ocean, down into darkness, down into
into-
-sanctuary.
* * * * *
It was the singing that woke him, though he didn't know it at first.
Jim came awake slowly, drifting out of a sleep so deep it was like throwing years off himself to finally reach the surface. The first thing he was aware of was that he was lying on something hard and not particularly comfortable: the floor of the tree-nest, he realized slowly. Those were leaves overhead, swaying and bobbing gently in the wind. This was followed by the discovery that, though he was outside, he wasn't cold. Jim glanced down at the warm, heavy weight covering him, and observed with some surprise that Spock was out cold on his chest, his head pillowed just under Jim's clavicle.
Details of the night before began to trickle back then, the pleasant drowsiness vanishing as image after image replayed itself in Jim's mind. The ceremony that had wrought such a horrible change in Spock; the violence of the fight by the fire; the endless hours running on the plain... Now that he remembered all he'd been through, his body's various aches and injuries hurried to greet him, making sure he knew exactly how much pain he was going to be in for the next week, at least. But they still weren't as bad as the night before, though when he got up Jim suspected he would be in for some serious stiffness. But he had other things to think about, for the moment.
Jim stared at the top of Spock's head, noticing that his own arms were wrapped firmly around Spock's shoulders, and that Spock was clinging to him in sleep as though Jim was a pillow, or a much-loved stuffed animal. Spock's torso rose and fell in a gentle rhythm as he breathed, and the torn back of his uniform shirt was dappled with light shining in through the canopy of leaves.
It was morning, Jim realized. Or almost. He glanced to his right, out towards the distant mountains that were just visible from this angle. The sight that greeted him was so stunning that he caught his breath, a lump forming in his throat.
The sun was rising, the outline of the mountains positively glowing, the faintest hint of gold at the edges. Overhead, the cloudless sky was radiant with color, soft purples and blues and pinks that blended into each other like the most glorious painting ever dreamed of, colors so brilliant that Jim would have sworn they did not exist in nature were he not seeing it with his own eyes. Between him and the mountains ran the open plains, which seemed to ripple in the faint wind; in the soft light of the early morning, Jim could see that the grass was actually blue-green, not silver as it had looked the night before.
And now he finally realized he could hear what he could only describe as song, though it had no words; a faint, lilting sound like bells or pipes that rose and fell with the sighing of the wind. Jim couldn't say whether it was a trick of the wind through the grass, or some strange resonance with the remnants of the ion storm that was rapidly fading overhead, but the high, pure song sent a sweet thrill through him, gooseflesh breaking out on his arms, tears pricking in his eyes. It seemed (and this was ridiculous, Jim knew it was ridiculous, but that didn't break the illusion) that the mountains were singing, that the very ground beneath him had raised its voice to welcome the sun back.
It was impossible that he should wake to such serenity, such peaceful, simple joy. It didn't fit. Five of his men had died, and who knew how many Altarans, and worst of all it had been Spock who'd killed them, driven insane from whatever was in those leaves Kivaren had thrown into the fire. After the horror and madness of the night before, that such beauty could even exist, much less be waiting to greet him... it was wrong. And yet he couldn't tear his eyes away.
Jim found himself thinking of the earthquake that had hit San Francisco his second year at the Academy. San Francisco was a city given to quakes, of course, and as her history went, this one hadn't been bad, but Jim was a Midwestern boy, more used to twisters and summer thunderstorms, and the quake had frightened him badly. He'd been in the dorm, studying for his xenobiology final, when he'd looked up and seen the water in his glass rippling and shimmering. Next thing he knew, the desk he was sitting at was juttering and bouncing and rocking back and forth, and he'd actually fallen over backwards in his chair, whacking his head on the floor.
He'd managed to scramble to his feet, only to almost topple over again as the floor under him swayed and lurched like a ship at sea. Books had rattled off shelves, his bed had thrown the PADDs and shoes lying on it to the floor, and to his horror Jim could hear the very building around him groaning as it buckled and swayed with the tremors of the earth. Jim had been scared blind, hiding in the doorframe to the bathroom with his fear throttling the air from his lungs until the worst of the shaking had passed. He'd been absolutely floored to learn that the quake had lasted for less than a minute, not quite fifty seconds. To Jim, it had felt endless, a nightmare that stretched forever and ever.
Classes had been canceled for a few days while the worst of the quake's damage had been cleaned up, and most everyone moved on with their lives, but Jim never really forgot about it. He'd had a hard time understanding how everyone but him had acted as though the quake just wasn't a big deal, that they could all go about their business as usual and not react to it at all. There was something wrong and impossible about the very earth betraying you like that, shaking and jumping and humping beneath you like a bucking horse trying to rid itself of its rider.
This night had been like that, for Spock. And for Jim. Something had broken open inside Spock, something buried so deep he hadn't even known it existed, much less that it could ever find its way out, and the very foundations of who he thought he was had been shattered, shaking underneath him as he tried to find his feet. And while it lasted, the shaking had been terrible.
But now it was over. Dear sweet Lord in Heaven, it was over at last. Jim guessed that when they got back up to the ship, Scotty would tell him that they'd been planetside for maybe ten hours, tops, while to Jim and Spock it had seemed like a slice of forever. But at least Spock wouldn't have to pick up the pieces alone. Jim would be here to help him. At this thought, Jim's arms tightened protectively around Spock, and his First Officer stirred, raising his head to peer groggily up at Jim.
"Captain," Spock said hoarsely, and stopped. Jim watched as Spock fought off the exhaustion that had claimed them after they'd both blacked out, could see the exact moment when memory of the previous night hit, because he could feel Spock tensing up against him.
"It's just Jim, Spock." Jim kept his arms where they were, tightening as Spock tried to sit up. Spock relented after a moment, staying where he was against Jim's chest, but the eyes peering up at Jim now were fraught with terrible anxiety, tension lining Spock's normally-impassive face.
"Jim," Spock said, and took a deep breath. Jim raised his hand, tentatively stroking the tip of a finger over Spock's cheekbone, and watched as Spock's eyes dilated rapidly, staring up at Jim.
"...You stayed," Spock said, finally. He sounded confused. Jim nodded.
"Told you I wouldn't leave you." Unbelievably, Jim felt himself smiling-a tired one, still, and weak, but real. Spots of color appeared high on Spock's cheeks in response.
"After what I have done, Captain-"
"I told you, it's Jim. And I meant it, Spock. I'll never leave you."
Spock said nothing at all for several moments, and down by Jim's hip, Jim could feel Spock's heart hammering wildly in his side, faster even than the normal speed for Vulcans. Jim kept his gaze locked on Spock's, blue eyes steady, and after a silence that stretched for almost a full minute, Spock finally moved. He reached around, finding one of Jim's hands with his own, and laced their fingers tightly together.
Behind Jim's eyes, a splash of color appeared, like flowers exploding into full bloom-there for a moment and then gone. Jim's breath hitched in his throat, squeezing Spock's hand tightly in his own. Outside the safety of their tree, the grasses hummed and sang, and the sun rose.
The comm unit at Jim's hip burst suddenly to life. "Cap'n Kirk, come in, Cap'n!" Scotty's voice buzzed and popped through the poor connection, and Jim let out the breath he had been holding. One hand still gripping Spock's firmly, he reached down with his other hand and grabbed the comm unit, flicking it open.
"Kirk here, Mr. Scott. Two to beam up. Tell Bones to stand by with a medical team."
"Aye aye, Cap'n." Jim shoved the comm unit back in his belt, his eyes never leaving Spock's blood-stained face as the world around them blurred to nothing. The last thing Jim was aware of as they left the surface of the planet was the feel of Spock's warm hand in his, and the faint, sweet song in his ears. Then they were gone.