Dreaming Through The Noise (3/?)
Title: Dreaming Through The Noise(3/?)
Wordcount: ~4,000 (15,000 overall so far)
Pairing/Characters: Kirk/Spock (Sort of Spock/T'Pring and later Spock/Uhura and Kirk/universe)
Rating: Overall, R.
Disclaimer: I don't own them!
Summary: Spock remembered far too well the first night he heard Jim's mental voice - close to dawn on a dreamless night and he was pulled away from his bed, to a dark, alien kitchen and a terrified, alien mind.
Note: I'm back to having no idea how long this is going to be. ::laughs:: It's become...very much a story about Spock, as well as an exploration of his connection with Kirk. Sooo.
Rain pattered against the roof of the hovercar. Spock watched the water slide down the windows, meeting and parting, mixing and mingling. Once, he would have seen the symbolism of that - the metaphor for his months ahead. Now all that it generated was T'Pring's soft scorn - a damp, unpleasant planet. He flicked her away with an ease it had taken years to perfect and examined the rest of the occupants of the car.
They were all off-worlders, or they would not be here, but they varied in their degree of outsider. There were three Orions, two females and a male. The females were wearing layers and layers of clothing, leaving as little of their green skin showing as possible - a reaction, Spock supposed, to the stereotypes that humanity had placed upon them, even after the slave trade was abolished. The male was fascinating - it was rare that they were seen, even now. His skin was blue to their green, although Spock thought that difference was individual rather than sex-related. His eyes were small and nervous, and he kept casting glances around at the other passengers.
Spock looked away from him and met the eyes of a human woman who had also been examining the Orion. Her hair was white-blonde and piled on top of her head, and she had a red cross sewn into the lapel of her grey, military-style jacket, something like the antique symbol for a medical officer. He assumed she was from some off-world colony, although which he could not tell.
She cast a glance back at the Orion man and then switched seats to sit next to Spock. "He's got lacerations on his wrists - like from shackles." She said quietly, staring out the opposite window at the rain. "His fingernails are broken and dirty - can't tell whether it's just dirt, or blood. There's a shake to his fingers - he's scared, and badly. Not supposed to be here, and wondering who knows it."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. You have surmised all of this from the state of his hands?"
She smiled, and it was surprising in its sweetness. "You can tell a lot about a man from his hands." She held out one of her own, and he saw that her nails were cut short and businesslike, her skin scrupulously clean. "Here, let me see - "
"That would not be advisable." Spock interrupted, keeping his hands flat on his knees.
Her brows drew together. "Why?"
Her turned to look at her properly. "Perhaps you were too busy examining the Orion to notice, but I am a Vulcan. Any physical examination of my hands would lead to me learning far more about you than you would learn about me, and I do not think you want to open yourself up to a complete stranger in such a fashion."
She blushed prettily. "Oh! I'm sorry. We don't get many, um, other races, where I'm from. I'd never seen an Orion, that's why I was staring - before I noticed the cuts, I mean."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Where are you from?"
Her eyes flickered, and he examined her more closely. She was wearing a short blue dress under her jacket, and the red cross was sewn patchily on over some other crest. She lowered her face. "Orpheus Mining Colony," she said, and she sounded resigned, almost guilty.
"The anti-alien movement known as Terra Prime was dissolved nearly seventy years ago, and it would be illogical to hold every resident of a mining colony of approximately twelve thousand people responsible for the actions of a small, if influential, portion of their population," Spock said, divining the reasons behind her reticence, as well as the tone of her voice.
She looked at him, expression a little odd. "Thank you," she said. "Not many people see it that way."
Spock nodded. "Many are driven by emotion, rather than logic. This is regrettable, but acceptable - for those who are not Vulcan."
Chapel looked amused. "I sense some bitterness, there."
Spock felt his face smooth, any trace of relaxation gone. "Vulcans do not get bitter, Miss....?"
He saw her move to stick out a hand again, and then stop herself. "Christine Chapel," she said. "Hopefully, soon to be 'doctor', not 'miss'."
He inclined his head. "Spock."
Her full lips quirked. "Just Spock?"
He folds his hands in front of him. The hovercar begins its descent. "My family name is impossible to pronounce to anyone not of Vulcan descent." It was not technically true - his mother had learned to speak it, after a fashion, but it had taken years of practice and psychic lessons.
Chapel smiled. "Fair enough. So, Mr. Spock, what brings you to Earth?"
Spock closed his eyes against the sound of the rain. The anticipation was loud in his veins again, a rushing, pounding nervousness that was wearing down his emotionless mask from the inside out. "I am enrolled in Starfleet Academy," he said, and opened his eyes.
Chapel's face said that she knew that for the non-answer it was, but after a moment she shook her head, her smile growing. "So am I."
They sat silent as the aircraft touched down. Spock tried not to think about anything - the sky was the sky that he'd seen the sun travel, a sunrise, a sunset here and there, through the bright-blue eyes of his dreaming. The grass was grass that he'd smelt, felt against Jim's feet. The doors slid open and the wind tasted familiar in a way that made him ache in places that had iced over and numbed long ago.
They filed out and split in two directions, leaving the landing strip through separate doors. Spock watched the Orion women embrace each other, and part, one of them heading off towards the city, the other joining Spock and Chapel's group. After a moment of hesitation, the nervous man followed the first woman at a safe distance. Spock caught the tail end of Chapel's glance at him, but felt no need to decipher her opaque expression. The Orion and whatever was troubling him were irrelevant.
An instructor from the Academy met them, sleek in a trim black uniform, and led them into the depths of the base. It was only through entering a state a bit like meditation that Spock was able to focus on Orientation; he could feel T'Pring laughing in the back of his mind but had no attention to spare for her. When his guide finally left him in his new quarters ("It's a single, cadet Spock. We thought you would be more comfortable without the imposition of a roommate"), he finally let himself realize that he was here. That he was standing in Iowa, with a few days before classes began, and free reign.
He blinked at the floor and then raised his head. "Computer," he said, voice coming out too quick, too harsh. "Find and display directions to the residence of Frank and Winona Kirk."
***
The sun was out completely by the time he arrived, hovering above the horizon and washing out the world to something monochrome golden. The house was even more ramshackle than when he had last seen it (of course it is, his brain said, six years), the porch roof more a lattice of rotted beams than anything practical. There were puddles of rain caught in the sags of the porch itself, and weeds twining through the floorboards.
There were cars in the garage and lights on, and somewhere inside he could hear voices.
He paused a moment on the front lawn, casting a long shadow against the ancient concrete steps. His stomach was suddenly afire with doubt - what if Jim didn't remember him, had dismissed him as a dream? What if he were so changed that they no longer connected? What if he blamed Spock for what had happened at the bonding?
But something uncurled against the back of his mind, an entirely visceral memory, an image of a hand gripped tight in his own, and he mounted the porch in one swift step.
He rapped his knuckles against the door, although he knew that Frank would have seen him already through the security system he had installed. It opened under his hand, and for a moment Spock felt disoriented, dizzy, as he met Frank Kirk's eyes for what was and what was not the first time. His hair was thinner, his waist thicker, but his reddened eyes, his veined arms were sickeningly familiar. Spock clenched his fists, alarmed at the depths of his distaste for the man.
He reigned himself in, straightening his new scarlet Starfleet uniform. "My name is Spock," he said, a touch proud of how steady his voice was. "I am looking for James T. Kirk."
He could feel Frank's eyes rove over him, could feel him notice the ears, the eyebrows, the uniform, and watched his lip curl. "He's not here." Frank said bluntly, and started to close the door in Spock's face.
Spock threw out a hand, and the door shuddered against his palm. "Please," he blurted. "I will wait for him, or if you know when he'll return I can come back - "
Frank turned back to him from where his eyes had been glued on Spock's hand. His face was twisted with contempt. "He's not coming back, point-ears. Been gone six years now and we never seen hide nor hair of him. And if he did show his face here, I'd bloody it. Idiot kid stole my fuckin' Corvette! My own beautiful car, and all I ever did was provide for him and his mom."
Spock felt shaky and strange, disconnected. "Have you any idea where he might be, sir?" He asked, voice somehow still polite and cool.
Frank shrugged and resumed trying to close the door. "Fuck if I know. Check the lock-up, that's where I'd stick him if I got the chance. Ungrateful little bastard. Needs to learn some fucking discipline, if you ask me."
Spock narrowed his eyes. "I did not. Ask you." He removed his hand and let the door swing shut, sudden, as Frank was suddenly exerting an inappropriate amount of pressure against it. He heard the sounds of stumbling and cursing on the other side, and let himself feel a sort of blank, distant pleasure.
He stepped off the porch. "Been gone six years now. Idiot kid stole my fuckin' Corvette!"
Six years, three months, and twelve days, Spock thought grimly, though he doubted Frank would know that. He could have it down to seconds if he spent the time thinking about the differences caused by the warp between Earth and Vulcan, but his mind wouldn't focus on the numbers. He left...or vanished...the morning my Bonding, of our Breaking. He was certain of it, now, as certain as he was that Jim was not in "lock-up". As certain as he was that his search had hit a sudden, sharp dead end.
He noticed, now, the space in the garage where the Corvette should have been. It glared at him, overgrown and bare, and he crouched in it, tracing his fingers over the ground. His hands, he noticed, were shaking. He picked up a piece of brick, broken and sharp. Presumably it had been used, once, as a block to set cars on in order to raise them above the ground. Now, though, portable anti-grav units hummed quietly in the corner, and the brick sat here, broken and useless.
Spock gripped it, felt his knuckles pop and the brick crumble. Useless.
**
"19,456.12, sir." Spock said, voice clipped. The teacher nodded. "Quick work, cadet Spock." He wrote the number on the board. "Now. This is only the beginning of our solution. If we forget to factor in the momentum we had going into warp, we won't compensate for it on the other side, which can cause collisions with anything that happens to be there - other ships, stations..." He quirked his mouth. "Planets..."
Spock sat blank-faced as the cadets on either side of him chuckled.
"So, if we take our initial speed and substitute it in to this next equation...I'll give you a moment."
Spock stared at the board, his mind filled with the beautiful rows of numbers. In seconds he put up his hand, but across the room, someone beat him to it. The teacher turned away from him. "Cadet Chapel?"
"Um, 25,867.431, sir." Chapel announced, the slightest bit hesitant.
The teacher grinned. "Excellently done."
Spock felt Chapel's eyes on him, and he turned slightly to look at her. Her gaze was considering, but softer than that, too. Admiring, perhaps. He straightened his back, uncomfortable, and turned to the equations on the board.
They played a sort of informal game, matching each other speed for speed, digit for digit. After class he found her waiting for him, leaning against the wall outside the classroom. "You're amazing." She said softly, when he paused next to her.
"Your own powers of deduction are considerable as well," he answered simply.
She shook her head, wry. "Yeah, but I was using a PADD." She held up the thin computer, and then looked significantly at his empty hands.
He raised a shoulder in a slight shrug. "Mathematics come easily to Vulcans. Numbers follow a logical progression, and transform according to simple rules."
She steps forward from the wall, face suddenly eager. This, then, was what she really wanted to talk about. "But you're not entirely Vulcan, are you Mr. Spock? Your mother, she was human, right? I asked around, you're a bit famous."
Spock felt leaden. "Indeed?"
Chapel took another step closer. "Why did you really come to Earth, Spock?" She asked, probing. "Are you running from something?"
In the back of his mind, T'Pring was cold and waiting. Spock looked at Chapel's eager face for a moment, and then moved past her. "It doesn't matter, cadet Chapel."
"It's Christine," she insisted to his back, "And it does matter!"
Spock stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. "No," he said, "Not anymore."
He slid, silent, through the crowds. Once, twice, he was jostled, human minds flickering against his own. His throat felt tight at their touch - so familiar so close to right so wrong - and he was almost jogging to get free of them, collapsing into his quarters with a ragged breath.
T'Pring waited for him to stand himself up, waiting for him to smooth a hand over his face, before she spoke. Why do you not tell the pretty one what you run from, bonded?
Spock closed his eyes and sat down on the floor, his back against the door. His conversations with T'Pring were entirely different from those with Jim - they spoke in a place that was not fully in either of their minds, a sort of dream-landscape not unlike the place of koon-ut-kal-if-fee. She was standing there, perfect and beautiful, one eyebrow raised. He folded his hands in front of him. Because I am not running from anything, bonded. You know this. You know what - who - I was running towards. Please, leave me in peace.
Was running. She mocked. You've given up, Spock. All the determination you felt...I was beginning to think you could actually make it, you know. And now what? Will you give it up, become a Starfleet officer, live out your life in a career that you chose for all the wrong reasons?
It is a career that would suit me, despite my reasons for taking it, he answered, gritting mental teeth against her tone.
She flickered a teasing hand down the side of his face, suddenly close, and he caught her wrist in furious fingers. She met his eyes. So much anger, she noted, and melted out of his grasp, standing composed and motionless again on the other side of the circle in the sand. But no one to blame. Nowhere to go. You've given up. It's too bad. There was something almost amusing in watching you scramble for your childhood hallucinations, as if they would claim you even if you did find them.
They would. Spock said with a conviction he did not feel. He would.
She raised her chin. But it does not matter. She said in his voice, and with a start he heard the pain in it, the sorrow, that he thought he had given up, or at least successfully hidden from Chapel. Not anymore.
Her eyes mocked him as she faded, leaving him alone in strange echo of a home he had given up. It was Vulcan and it was not, because there was none of the heat of the sun, none of the grit of the sand, just a sort of weighted numbness. It was hard to feel anything, against his skin, against the mask he had constructed over his emotions. All was silent.
He stayed there, alone, for a long time.
**
"You asked for me, instructor?"
The man looked up from his PADD, where he was tapping his stylus in apparent frustration. "Ah, yes. Cadet Spock. Come in, have a seat." He said, and put aside it aside, folding his hands in front of him. There was a window behind him, and the snow's glare made him a shadowed silhouette more than a man.
Spock took the chair he offered, and waited.
"You were on the hovercraft A-453, were you not? The shuttle from the space port, at the beginning of the school year."
Spock was already nodding, not needing the clarification. "Yes, sir, I was."
The instructor nodded, satisfied. "Did you, by any chance, see this man?"
He held up the PADD, displaying a picture of a blue-skinned Orion man, his eyes slightly too-wide. In the image he was dressed much more beautifully than he had been on the craft, but it was definitely the same man.
"I did." Spock acknowledged. "In fact, he held my attention for some minutes, as his appearance was intriguing. He seemed, if I may make the judgment, nervous. His wrists bore the marks of recent restraints, and his fingernails were worn and dirtied, as if he had been misusing or overusing his hands."
The instructor sat back in his chair, more of the white light from outside falling on his face, and Spock recognized him. Christopher Pike. His face was familiar - he was an extremely competent Starfleet Captain, and responsible for recruiting perhaps half the cadets in Spock's class and the one below him. At the moment, his face was also halfway between surprised and impressed. "You got all of that from a few minutes of examination?"
Spock shook his head. "Many of the observations were made by cadet Chapel, whose acquaintance I made on that same hovercraft."
Pike rubbed his chin. "Chapel, Chapel..." He swung around in his chair to his computer. "Computer, bring up cadet Chapel's profile." He waited a moment, and then nodded. "Right, yes. Christine Chapel, medical student." He kept reading, and his lips twitched downward. "Unsurprising that she would find an Orion man worthy of examination," he said. Before Spock could do anything but register the tone of the words, he was speaking again to the computer. "Quarters of Christine Chapel, please."
After a moment Chapel's surprised voice came through the comms. "Sir?"
"Cadet Chapel, please come to my office. I've got a few things I want to talk to you about." Pike said brusquely. "Pike out." He switched the computer off and turned back to Spock.
"You assume that Chapel is biased against nonhuman races because of her upbringing on the Orpheus Mining Colony, " Spock said, carefully.
Pike regarded him with sad eyes. "My mother was an artist. She taught at the Andorian Academy, was friends with many of the Andorians - and others - there. In her third year of teaching, she died protecting her students from Terran supremacists from Orpheus."
Spock blinked at him. "But Terra Prime was dissolved in 2183 - for you mother to have died before that... that would make you more than seventy years of age, sir."
Pike leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Prejudice does not end just because it is no longer officially organized, cadet." He shook his head. "I suppose Vulcan doesn't have much in the way of racists, but here on Earth we've had a long complex history with stupid prejudices. It makes us wary."
Spock remembered innocent curiosity, an idle question - what is racism? - and Jim's struggle to answer. He swallowed against the memory. "Nonetheless," he managed, "I do not believe you are being entirely fair to cadet Chapel, sir. From what I have seen, she displays nothing more hostile towards nonhuman races than a perhaps overeager curiosity, which is entirely understandable, given their complete refusal to set foot on Orpheus. It is my opinion that she, at least, is free of most of the prejudice that marks her society."
"Why, Mr. Spock, that's sweet! I didn't think you cared - what with being an uncaring Vulcan and everything."
Spock turned to see Chapel standing in the doorway, curls tumbling about her face. She saluted Pike and stepped forward, not looking at Spock. "Have I done something wrong, sir?"
"No, no." Pike gestured to another chair. "In fact, if cadet Spock is to be believed, you've done many things right." He held out the PADD. "You remember this man."
She took it, and nodded. "From the hovercraft over, yes, sir." She looked between them. "He's a fugitive, isn't he?"
Spock raised his eyebrows, and Pike shook his head, chuckling. "Well, that answers that question." He reclaimed the PADD and sat back in his chair. "The Orion's name is Heled-Mar, and you will have files on his background sent to your personal computers. Both of you - you'll be accompanying myself and Major Drabus to retrieve him and send him back to Orion."
Spock blinked, puzzled. "Pardon me, sir, but are there not police forces better suited to the retrieval of a fugitive than Starfleet cadets?"
Pike nodded. "Certainly. But Heled-Mar's status as a newly-freed Orion, as well as an intergalactic criminal, means that no Earth police force holds jurisdiction over him. Thus, it falls to Starfleet. As the two of you are the only two we know of who have actually laid eyes on the man, you'll be part of the retrieval force." He smiled slightly. "Plus, it'll be good for you kids to see some action. Now, did either of you see which way he went?"
"He separated from us when the instructor met us outside," Spock said. "He went towards the City. Beyond that, I could not tell."
Chapel looked at Spock for a long moment, face serious. Spock looked back, saying nothing. "...Sir," Chapel said, finally turning away, "There was another cadet on the hovercar, an Orion girl. I didn't catch her name."
Pike hummed and picked up his stylus. "Did she pay attention to Heled-Mar?"
Chapel shook her head slowly. "No, actually, it... it was more like she was deliberately ignoring him, sir."
Piked nodded and jotted something down. "I see. Thank you. You're both dismissed. I'll contact you in a few days with more information about the mission."
Spock rose and inclined his head to Pike, then left the room. A few seconds later, he heard Chapel's quick steps behind him.
"Hey, um." She said, and he turned, resigned. "I'm sorry if I've offended you or anything and you don't really seem to like me much, but I really did appreciate what you did back there. Like I said before, there aren't many who can see past what some of us have done to what others of us are."
Spock bowed a bit to the thanks. "I have met...racists." He said, and T'Pring hissed warningly in the back of his mind. "You are not one of them."
"Have you?" She asked, curious. "I wouldn't think - I mean, Vulcans don't exactly strike me as judgmental."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "You have never met a full Vulcan."
She smirked. "True. Only you." She tugged at a curl. "Hey, listen. A bunch of us - we're going out for drinks later, and I....well, I mean, if we're going to be working together, and we don't know how long this is going to take...would you like to come? As a friend. We could. Be friends, I mean."
Spock stared at her for a long moment. Friends. Vulcans had friends - habitual chess-partners, peers in academics. But Spock had never really had either - he enjoyed chess more as a way to judge character than as a game, and many of his age-mates were nothing near his intellectual level.
The only person he counted as a friend was Jim Kirk, and that...That was something that Christine Chapel could never come close to. Something so much more than friend that Spock didn't quite know how to describe it in Vulcan, and certainly couldn't in Common.
"...That would be acceptable." He said at last. It was a social gathering, not a contract, and he could always return to his quarters to meditate if he felt it necessary. But perhaps in the noise and heat of an Earth bar it would be harder to hear T'Pring's cold music.
She blinked, and then smiled, that utterly sweet, surprised smile that she'd had the first day. "Really?" She said, and then shook her head. "I mean, yeah, awesome. I'll come by your room around 21:00, okay?" She waved, and vanished down a corridor.
Spock watched her go, and went to read about Heled-Mar and his crimes against sentience. It would clear his head.
Friends. That, like everything else since his arrival on this planet, was unexpected.
It will not last, T'Pring thought at him, or maybe it was his own doubts. It was sometimes hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
Perhaps, he agreed. But perhaps not.
And for now that was enough.
Wordcount: ~4,000 (15,000 overall so far)
Pairing/Characters: Kirk/Spock (Sort of Spock/T'Pring and later Spock/Uhura and Kirk/universe)
Rating: Overall, R.
Disclaimer: I don't own them!
Summary: Spock remembered far too well the first night he heard Jim's mental voice - close to dawn on a dreamless night and he was pulled away from his bed, to a dark, alien kitchen and a terrified, alien mind.
Note: I'm back to having no idea how long this is going to be. ::laughs:: It's become...very much a story about Spock, as well as an exploration of his connection with Kirk. Sooo.
Rain pattered against the roof of the hovercar. Spock watched the water slide down the windows, meeting and parting, mixing and mingling. Once, he would have seen the symbolism of that - the metaphor for his months ahead. Now all that it generated was T'Pring's soft scorn - a damp, unpleasant planet. He flicked her away with an ease it had taken years to perfect and examined the rest of the occupants of the car.
They were all off-worlders, or they would not be here, but they varied in their degree of outsider. There were three Orions, two females and a male. The females were wearing layers and layers of clothing, leaving as little of their green skin showing as possible - a reaction, Spock supposed, to the stereotypes that humanity had placed upon them, even after the slave trade was abolished. The male was fascinating - it was rare that they were seen, even now. His skin was blue to their green, although Spock thought that difference was individual rather than sex-related. His eyes were small and nervous, and he kept casting glances around at the other passengers.
Spock looked away from him and met the eyes of a human woman who had also been examining the Orion. Her hair was white-blonde and piled on top of her head, and she had a red cross sewn into the lapel of her grey, military-style jacket, something like the antique symbol for a medical officer. He assumed she was from some off-world colony, although which he could not tell.
She cast a glance back at the Orion man and then switched seats to sit next to Spock. "He's got lacerations on his wrists - like from shackles." She said quietly, staring out the opposite window at the rain. "His fingernails are broken and dirty - can't tell whether it's just dirt, or blood. There's a shake to his fingers - he's scared, and badly. Not supposed to be here, and wondering who knows it."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. You have surmised all of this from the state of his hands?"
She smiled, and it was surprising in its sweetness. "You can tell a lot about a man from his hands." She held out one of her own, and he saw that her nails were cut short and businesslike, her skin scrupulously clean. "Here, let me see - "
"That would not be advisable." Spock interrupted, keeping his hands flat on his knees.
Her brows drew together. "Why?"
Her turned to look at her properly. "Perhaps you were too busy examining the Orion to notice, but I am a Vulcan. Any physical examination of my hands would lead to me learning far more about you than you would learn about me, and I do not think you want to open yourself up to a complete stranger in such a fashion."
She blushed prettily. "Oh! I'm sorry. We don't get many, um, other races, where I'm from. I'd never seen an Orion, that's why I was staring - before I noticed the cuts, I mean."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "Where are you from?"
Her eyes flickered, and he examined her more closely. She was wearing a short blue dress under her jacket, and the red cross was sewn patchily on over some other crest. She lowered her face. "Orpheus Mining Colony," she said, and she sounded resigned, almost guilty.
"The anti-alien movement known as Terra Prime was dissolved nearly seventy years ago, and it would be illogical to hold every resident of a mining colony of approximately twelve thousand people responsible for the actions of a small, if influential, portion of their population," Spock said, divining the reasons behind her reticence, as well as the tone of her voice.
She looked at him, expression a little odd. "Thank you," she said. "Not many people see it that way."
Spock nodded. "Many are driven by emotion, rather than logic. This is regrettable, but acceptable - for those who are not Vulcan."
Chapel looked amused. "I sense some bitterness, there."
Spock felt his face smooth, any trace of relaxation gone. "Vulcans do not get bitter, Miss....?"
He saw her move to stick out a hand again, and then stop herself. "Christine Chapel," she said. "Hopefully, soon to be 'doctor', not 'miss'."
He inclined his head. "Spock."
Her full lips quirked. "Just Spock?"
He folds his hands in front of him. The hovercar begins its descent. "My family name is impossible to pronounce to anyone not of Vulcan descent." It was not technically true - his mother had learned to speak it, after a fashion, but it had taken years of practice and psychic lessons.
Chapel smiled. "Fair enough. So, Mr. Spock, what brings you to Earth?"
Spock closed his eyes against the sound of the rain. The anticipation was loud in his veins again, a rushing, pounding nervousness that was wearing down his emotionless mask from the inside out. "I am enrolled in Starfleet Academy," he said, and opened his eyes.
Chapel's face said that she knew that for the non-answer it was, but after a moment she shook her head, her smile growing. "So am I."
They sat silent as the aircraft touched down. Spock tried not to think about anything - the sky was the sky that he'd seen the sun travel, a sunrise, a sunset here and there, through the bright-blue eyes of his dreaming. The grass was grass that he'd smelt, felt against Jim's feet. The doors slid open and the wind tasted familiar in a way that made him ache in places that had iced over and numbed long ago.
They filed out and split in two directions, leaving the landing strip through separate doors. Spock watched the Orion women embrace each other, and part, one of them heading off towards the city, the other joining Spock and Chapel's group. After a moment of hesitation, the nervous man followed the first woman at a safe distance. Spock caught the tail end of Chapel's glance at him, but felt no need to decipher her opaque expression. The Orion and whatever was troubling him were irrelevant.
An instructor from the Academy met them, sleek in a trim black uniform, and led them into the depths of the base. It was only through entering a state a bit like meditation that Spock was able to focus on Orientation; he could feel T'Pring laughing in the back of his mind but had no attention to spare for her. When his guide finally left him in his new quarters ("It's a single, cadet Spock. We thought you would be more comfortable without the imposition of a roommate"), he finally let himself realize that he was here. That he was standing in Iowa, with a few days before classes began, and free reign.
He blinked at the floor and then raised his head. "Computer," he said, voice coming out too quick, too harsh. "Find and display directions to the residence of Frank and Winona Kirk."
***
The sun was out completely by the time he arrived, hovering above the horizon and washing out the world to something monochrome golden. The house was even more ramshackle than when he had last seen it (of course it is, his brain said, six years), the porch roof more a lattice of rotted beams than anything practical. There were puddles of rain caught in the sags of the porch itself, and weeds twining through the floorboards.
There were cars in the garage and lights on, and somewhere inside he could hear voices.
He paused a moment on the front lawn, casting a long shadow against the ancient concrete steps. His stomach was suddenly afire with doubt - what if Jim didn't remember him, had dismissed him as a dream? What if he were so changed that they no longer connected? What if he blamed Spock for what had happened at the bonding?
But something uncurled against the back of his mind, an entirely visceral memory, an image of a hand gripped tight in his own, and he mounted the porch in one swift step.
He rapped his knuckles against the door, although he knew that Frank would have seen him already through the security system he had installed. It opened under his hand, and for a moment Spock felt disoriented, dizzy, as he met Frank Kirk's eyes for what was and what was not the first time. His hair was thinner, his waist thicker, but his reddened eyes, his veined arms were sickeningly familiar. Spock clenched his fists, alarmed at the depths of his distaste for the man.
He reigned himself in, straightening his new scarlet Starfleet uniform. "My name is Spock," he said, a touch proud of how steady his voice was. "I am looking for James T. Kirk."
He could feel Frank's eyes rove over him, could feel him notice the ears, the eyebrows, the uniform, and watched his lip curl. "He's not here." Frank said bluntly, and started to close the door in Spock's face.
Spock threw out a hand, and the door shuddered against his palm. "Please," he blurted. "I will wait for him, or if you know when he'll return I can come back - "
Frank turned back to him from where his eyes had been glued on Spock's hand. His face was twisted with contempt. "He's not coming back, point-ears. Been gone six years now and we never seen hide nor hair of him. And if he did show his face here, I'd bloody it. Idiot kid stole my fuckin' Corvette! My own beautiful car, and all I ever did was provide for him and his mom."
Spock felt shaky and strange, disconnected. "Have you any idea where he might be, sir?" He asked, voice somehow still polite and cool.
Frank shrugged and resumed trying to close the door. "Fuck if I know. Check the lock-up, that's where I'd stick him if I got the chance. Ungrateful little bastard. Needs to learn some fucking discipline, if you ask me."
Spock narrowed his eyes. "I did not. Ask you." He removed his hand and let the door swing shut, sudden, as Frank was suddenly exerting an inappropriate amount of pressure against it. He heard the sounds of stumbling and cursing on the other side, and let himself feel a sort of blank, distant pleasure.
He stepped off the porch. "Been gone six years now. Idiot kid stole my fuckin' Corvette!"
Six years, three months, and twelve days, Spock thought grimly, though he doubted Frank would know that. He could have it down to seconds if he spent the time thinking about the differences caused by the warp between Earth and Vulcan, but his mind wouldn't focus on the numbers. He left...or vanished...the morning my Bonding, of our Breaking. He was certain of it, now, as certain as he was that Jim was not in "lock-up". As certain as he was that his search had hit a sudden, sharp dead end.
He noticed, now, the space in the garage where the Corvette should have been. It glared at him, overgrown and bare, and he crouched in it, tracing his fingers over the ground. His hands, he noticed, were shaking. He picked up a piece of brick, broken and sharp. Presumably it had been used, once, as a block to set cars on in order to raise them above the ground. Now, though, portable anti-grav units hummed quietly in the corner, and the brick sat here, broken and useless.
Spock gripped it, felt his knuckles pop and the brick crumble. Useless.
**
"19,456.12, sir." Spock said, voice clipped. The teacher nodded. "Quick work, cadet Spock." He wrote the number on the board. "Now. This is only the beginning of our solution. If we forget to factor in the momentum we had going into warp, we won't compensate for it on the other side, which can cause collisions with anything that happens to be there - other ships, stations..." He quirked his mouth. "Planets..."
Spock sat blank-faced as the cadets on either side of him chuckled.
"So, if we take our initial speed and substitute it in to this next equation...I'll give you a moment."
Spock stared at the board, his mind filled with the beautiful rows of numbers. In seconds he put up his hand, but across the room, someone beat him to it. The teacher turned away from him. "Cadet Chapel?"
"Um, 25,867.431, sir." Chapel announced, the slightest bit hesitant.
The teacher grinned. "Excellently done."
Spock felt Chapel's eyes on him, and he turned slightly to look at her. Her gaze was considering, but softer than that, too. Admiring, perhaps. He straightened his back, uncomfortable, and turned to the equations on the board.
They played a sort of informal game, matching each other speed for speed, digit for digit. After class he found her waiting for him, leaning against the wall outside the classroom. "You're amazing." She said softly, when he paused next to her.
"Your own powers of deduction are considerable as well," he answered simply.
She shook her head, wry. "Yeah, but I was using a PADD." She held up the thin computer, and then looked significantly at his empty hands.
He raised a shoulder in a slight shrug. "Mathematics come easily to Vulcans. Numbers follow a logical progression, and transform according to simple rules."
She steps forward from the wall, face suddenly eager. This, then, was what she really wanted to talk about. "But you're not entirely Vulcan, are you Mr. Spock? Your mother, she was human, right? I asked around, you're a bit famous."
Spock felt leaden. "Indeed?"
Chapel took another step closer. "Why did you really come to Earth, Spock?" She asked, probing. "Are you running from something?"
In the back of his mind, T'Pring was cold and waiting. Spock looked at Chapel's eager face for a moment, and then moved past her. "It doesn't matter, cadet Chapel."
"It's Christine," she insisted to his back, "And it does matter!"
Spock stopped and looked back over his shoulder at her. "No," he said, "Not anymore."
He slid, silent, through the crowds. Once, twice, he was jostled, human minds flickering against his own. His throat felt tight at their touch - so familiar so close to right so wrong - and he was almost jogging to get free of them, collapsing into his quarters with a ragged breath.
T'Pring waited for him to stand himself up, waiting for him to smooth a hand over his face, before she spoke. Why do you not tell the pretty one what you run from, bonded?
Spock closed his eyes and sat down on the floor, his back against the door. His conversations with T'Pring were entirely different from those with Jim - they spoke in a place that was not fully in either of their minds, a sort of dream-landscape not unlike the place of koon-ut-kal-if-fee. She was standing there, perfect and beautiful, one eyebrow raised. He folded his hands in front of him. Because I am not running from anything, bonded. You know this. You know what - who - I was running towards. Please, leave me in peace.
Was running. She mocked. You've given up, Spock. All the determination you felt...I was beginning to think you could actually make it, you know. And now what? Will you give it up, become a Starfleet officer, live out your life in a career that you chose for all the wrong reasons?
It is a career that would suit me, despite my reasons for taking it, he answered, gritting mental teeth against her tone.
She flickered a teasing hand down the side of his face, suddenly close, and he caught her wrist in furious fingers. She met his eyes. So much anger, she noted, and melted out of his grasp, standing composed and motionless again on the other side of the circle in the sand. But no one to blame. Nowhere to go. You've given up. It's too bad. There was something almost amusing in watching you scramble for your childhood hallucinations, as if they would claim you even if you did find them.
They would. Spock said with a conviction he did not feel. He would.
She raised her chin. But it does not matter. She said in his voice, and with a start he heard the pain in it, the sorrow, that he thought he had given up, or at least successfully hidden from Chapel. Not anymore.
Her eyes mocked him as she faded, leaving him alone in strange echo of a home he had given up. It was Vulcan and it was not, because there was none of the heat of the sun, none of the grit of the sand, just a sort of weighted numbness. It was hard to feel anything, against his skin, against the mask he had constructed over his emotions. All was silent.
He stayed there, alone, for a long time.
**
"You asked for me, instructor?"
The man looked up from his PADD, where he was tapping his stylus in apparent frustration. "Ah, yes. Cadet Spock. Come in, have a seat." He said, and put aside it aside, folding his hands in front of him. There was a window behind him, and the snow's glare made him a shadowed silhouette more than a man.
Spock took the chair he offered, and waited.
"You were on the hovercraft A-453, were you not? The shuttle from the space port, at the beginning of the school year."
Spock was already nodding, not needing the clarification. "Yes, sir, I was."
The instructor nodded, satisfied. "Did you, by any chance, see this man?"
He held up the PADD, displaying a picture of a blue-skinned Orion man, his eyes slightly too-wide. In the image he was dressed much more beautifully than he had been on the craft, but it was definitely the same man.
"I did." Spock acknowledged. "In fact, he held my attention for some minutes, as his appearance was intriguing. He seemed, if I may make the judgment, nervous. His wrists bore the marks of recent restraints, and his fingernails were worn and dirtied, as if he had been misusing or overusing his hands."
The instructor sat back in his chair, more of the white light from outside falling on his face, and Spock recognized him. Christopher Pike. His face was familiar - he was an extremely competent Starfleet Captain, and responsible for recruiting perhaps half the cadets in Spock's class and the one below him. At the moment, his face was also halfway between surprised and impressed. "You got all of that from a few minutes of examination?"
Spock shook his head. "Many of the observations were made by cadet Chapel, whose acquaintance I made on that same hovercraft."
Pike rubbed his chin. "Chapel, Chapel..." He swung around in his chair to his computer. "Computer, bring up cadet Chapel's profile." He waited a moment, and then nodded. "Right, yes. Christine Chapel, medical student." He kept reading, and his lips twitched downward. "Unsurprising that she would find an Orion man worthy of examination," he said. Before Spock could do anything but register the tone of the words, he was speaking again to the computer. "Quarters of Christine Chapel, please."
After a moment Chapel's surprised voice came through the comms. "Sir?"
"Cadet Chapel, please come to my office. I've got a few things I want to talk to you about." Pike said brusquely. "Pike out." He switched the computer off and turned back to Spock.
"You assume that Chapel is biased against nonhuman races because of her upbringing on the Orpheus Mining Colony, " Spock said, carefully.
Pike regarded him with sad eyes. "My mother was an artist. She taught at the Andorian Academy, was friends with many of the Andorians - and others - there. In her third year of teaching, she died protecting her students from Terran supremacists from Orpheus."
Spock blinked at him. "But Terra Prime was dissolved in 2183 - for you mother to have died before that... that would make you more than seventy years of age, sir."
Pike leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "Prejudice does not end just because it is no longer officially organized, cadet." He shook his head. "I suppose Vulcan doesn't have much in the way of racists, but here on Earth we've had a long complex history with stupid prejudices. It makes us wary."
Spock remembered innocent curiosity, an idle question - what is racism? - and Jim's struggle to answer. He swallowed against the memory. "Nonetheless," he managed, "I do not believe you are being entirely fair to cadet Chapel, sir. From what I have seen, she displays nothing more hostile towards nonhuman races than a perhaps overeager curiosity, which is entirely understandable, given their complete refusal to set foot on Orpheus. It is my opinion that she, at least, is free of most of the prejudice that marks her society."
"Why, Mr. Spock, that's sweet! I didn't think you cared - what with being an uncaring Vulcan and everything."
Spock turned to see Chapel standing in the doorway, curls tumbling about her face. She saluted Pike and stepped forward, not looking at Spock. "Have I done something wrong, sir?"
"No, no." Pike gestured to another chair. "In fact, if cadet Spock is to be believed, you've done many things right." He held out the PADD. "You remember this man."
She took it, and nodded. "From the hovercraft over, yes, sir." She looked between them. "He's a fugitive, isn't he?"
Spock raised his eyebrows, and Pike shook his head, chuckling. "Well, that answers that question." He reclaimed the PADD and sat back in his chair. "The Orion's name is Heled-Mar, and you will have files on his background sent to your personal computers. Both of you - you'll be accompanying myself and Major Drabus to retrieve him and send him back to Orion."
Spock blinked, puzzled. "Pardon me, sir, but are there not police forces better suited to the retrieval of a fugitive than Starfleet cadets?"
Pike nodded. "Certainly. But Heled-Mar's status as a newly-freed Orion, as well as an intergalactic criminal, means that no Earth police force holds jurisdiction over him. Thus, it falls to Starfleet. As the two of you are the only two we know of who have actually laid eyes on the man, you'll be part of the retrieval force." He smiled slightly. "Plus, it'll be good for you kids to see some action. Now, did either of you see which way he went?"
"He separated from us when the instructor met us outside," Spock said. "He went towards the City. Beyond that, I could not tell."
Chapel looked at Spock for a long moment, face serious. Spock looked back, saying nothing. "...Sir," Chapel said, finally turning away, "There was another cadet on the hovercar, an Orion girl. I didn't catch her name."
Pike hummed and picked up his stylus. "Did she pay attention to Heled-Mar?"
Chapel shook her head slowly. "No, actually, it... it was more like she was deliberately ignoring him, sir."
Piked nodded and jotted something down. "I see. Thank you. You're both dismissed. I'll contact you in a few days with more information about the mission."
Spock rose and inclined his head to Pike, then left the room. A few seconds later, he heard Chapel's quick steps behind him.
"Hey, um." She said, and he turned, resigned. "I'm sorry if I've offended you or anything and you don't really seem to like me much, but I really did appreciate what you did back there. Like I said before, there aren't many who can see past what some of us have done to what others of us are."
Spock bowed a bit to the thanks. "I have met...racists." He said, and T'Pring hissed warningly in the back of his mind. "You are not one of them."
"Have you?" She asked, curious. "I wouldn't think - I mean, Vulcans don't exactly strike me as judgmental."
Spock raised an eyebrow. "You have never met a full Vulcan."
She smirked. "True. Only you." She tugged at a curl. "Hey, listen. A bunch of us - we're going out for drinks later, and I....well, I mean, if we're going to be working together, and we don't know how long this is going to take...would you like to come? As a friend. We could. Be friends, I mean."
Spock stared at her for a long moment. Friends. Vulcans had friends - habitual chess-partners, peers in academics. But Spock had never really had either - he enjoyed chess more as a way to judge character than as a game, and many of his age-mates were nothing near his intellectual level.
The only person he counted as a friend was Jim Kirk, and that...That was something that Christine Chapel could never come close to. Something so much more than friend that Spock didn't quite know how to describe it in Vulcan, and certainly couldn't in Common.
"...That would be acceptable." He said at last. It was a social gathering, not a contract, and he could always return to his quarters to meditate if he felt it necessary. But perhaps in the noise and heat of an Earth bar it would be harder to hear T'Pring's cold music.
She blinked, and then smiled, that utterly sweet, surprised smile that she'd had the first day. "Really?" She said, and then shook her head. "I mean, yeah, awesome. I'll come by your room around 21:00, okay?" She waved, and vanished down a corridor.
Spock watched her go, and went to read about Heled-Mar and his crimes against sentience. It would clear his head.
Friends. That, like everything else since his arrival on this planet, was unexpected.
It will not last, T'Pring thought at him, or maybe it was his own doubts. It was sometimes hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
Perhaps, he agreed. But perhaps not.
And for now that was enough.