The Meditation Gardens (Open Post is Open!)

[sehlatbear]

If Spock had been prone to think of such things in such terms, he would have thought it funny (if he had been willing to acknowledge such a human thing as humor) that a place so unlike his native Vulcan would most remind him of it. The meditation gardens were lush, greenery in abundance organized along classic Vulcan aesthetic principles of order,

Comments

[gold_ambition]

James could not read Vulcan

[gold_ambition]

James glanced sharply at Spock. "I didn't mean I considered it a miracle. I'm not an idiot. I meant the general perception--everyone's waiting for me to fuck up, like it's some sort of impossibility for me to avoid my bestial temper. But you can get along here. It's not your world, but from what I can see it's a lot closer than mine. Fundamental values, and all that shit. Starfleet would give you a commission anywhere you want."

[sehlatbear]

"Were you provided opportunity to meet my own mirror counterpart? He and his Pike, both alternate selves to the Spock and Pike of this universe, were on the Enterprise for a time. They observed similar difficulty."

[gold_ambition]

"And where are they now?" James countered, not knowing. "I met them. We weren't exactly on friendly terms."

Spock had kept looking at him like he was a live wire or something.

[sehlatbear]

The grass was pleasant and cool under Spock's bare feet. It was, he considered, unfortunate that his mirror counterpart could not also experience it.

"I am not aware. That Pike, to my knowledge, returned to his own universe and then chose to return here - though to do so was only logical in his circumstance. Evidence suggests they reached some secret agreement with Starfleet."

[gold_ambition]

Now that was interesting. It was too bad, James thought, he hadn't spoken to them. No doubt they'd been deliberately secretive, but perhaps he could find something out. Maybe Korby could help--for a price, naturally, but everyone had one.

"They're dangerous men," he said casually. It had been obvious, though. "This Starfleet was either foolish or deceitful."

[sehlatbear]

"Indeed they are. A fact which, I am quite certain, this Starfleet knows and uses to their own advantage. One must do what one must to survive. They are at least together."

[gold_ambition]

Survive. That was all James was trying to do.

"Fucking odd couple, that," he observed. "I don't get it." He looked at Spock. He didn't really get them, either. Was weird, looking at someone who was practically married to you in another life. Even if you hated that other you and vehemently denied you were anything alike.

[sehlatbear]

"It does not appear, through the various iterations of myself that I have encountered, to be a common pairing. However, they seem uniquely suited to each other, perhaps due to the demands and circumstances of their own universe."

Spock had some familiarity with this James's universe - it had to be said that Pike and Spock's had seemed somehow even more brutal.

[gold_ambition]

James shrugged.

"Well. They still chose to stay here," he said. "And I don't get that, either."

He said as much. But as he sat here, though his instincts were not entirely dulled, he had no fear of death. And he had, in the past weeks, drunk several things without fear of poison.

[sehlatbear]

Spock's head tilted, curious. "And would you, given the choice, return to your universe with no wistfulness for a different way of living?"

[gold_ambition]

James laughed abruptly, bitterly.

"This isn't living," he said. "This is... stasis. Ask me when I've found something they'll let me do, that I'm good at. Not that... not that there's nothing I would miss."

[sehlatbear]

"What are you good at, James Kirk?"

[gold_ambition]

"Strategy," he said. "But the rules are different here. It's not like chemistry or astrophysics, where the laws are all the same."

[sehlatbear]

"The laws are also different in my own universe." Spock's eyebrows, in as much as they ever expressed anything, spoke of a certain mute disappointment. "However, differences may be learned. Especially if one is a strategist."

[gold_ambition]

"They can be," James agreed. "If one sees a point in it." He thought he'd caught something in Spock's manner, light as it was. "What's different?"