A Distant Horizon Epilogue
Epilogue
The House of Sarek had resources and influence that stretched beyond the bounds of Vulcan-Past. Enough to keep kith and kin in luxury on Earth. Enough to build this sprawling house on New Vulcan. Enough to commission a personal space craft, if it was deemed logical. Spock remembered his Kirk’s reaction when he first realized he’d married into aristocracy some time after the incident with V’Ger: “Does this mean I’m your consort?” he’d asked with a cheeky grin.
This Kirk, the one currently stretching in a sensuous display on Spock’s bed, was not his Kirk. Not yet. They had not bonded. They had not gone through death and destruction and come out the other side to meet one another again. They had not fought and forgiven and parted and reunited so many times that Spock didn’t care to keep count.
He’d made many mistakes in his life.
This Kirk, young and supple and beautiful, belonged to someone else. Belonged to a Spock whose myriad missteps were only choices waiting to be made instead of regrets to be counted like so many worthless coins.
Spock had great plans for him.
Kirk rose, all naked splendor, and crossed the room to sling his arms round Spock’s neck and plant a kiss to the side of his head. Spock leaned back in his chair, away from the console he had been bending formulas in. Kirk propped his chin on Spock’s shoulder, and Spock rubbed Kirk’s forearm where it circled his neck.
“So why’d you ask me to take off today?” Kirk asked. “You know I can’t stand a mystery.”
Spock closed his eyes. When he opened them again he turned around in his chair and stood, setting his hands on Kirk’s shoulders. Kirk looked up into his face with those mercurial eyes - a honeyed green now, when he was feeling happy and a little amorous.
“Wash and dress, Jim,” Spock said, “and come with me.”
While Kirk did as told, Spock left the bedroom and stood in front of window that took up the entire width of the living space wall. Outside, the sands of this planet rolled a dull red far into the distance until it met the hazy horizon. It was not Vulcan, and it would never be. He feared his people would never recover from the wound of Vulcan’s absence, would never stand on these sands and feel an elemental belonging. He knew it was an illogical fear; new generations would be born here, bred beneath this bruise-colored sky, and they would never know the pain of the death of their home. These days (as his human colleagues might once have said, while they still lived), Spock was comfortable with the occasional bouts of illogic inherent in his nature.
In the aircar on the way to the space port, Kirk tried to wheedle from Spock their destination, his purpose, his plans, but Spock remained coy and kept conversation maddeningly circular. By the time they were at the port, Kirk had threatened to tear out his own hair and wore a pout the size of one of New Vulcan’s moons. He brightened when Spock pulled into port parking.
“We going somewhere?” he asked. “Pre-honeymoon, maybe?” He winked. Spock gifted him a small smile. They got out of the car and Spock led them to a private dock, had his ID scanned, and made his way down the long indoor pier that housed shuttle-sized crafts. “C’mon, Spock,” Kirk said then, amusement having evaporated. Spock forced himself to look at him. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Spock stopped in front of a large door and ushered Kirk through it. In the large space sat a small, sleek, modern craft. To Spock’s eye, it looked clunky and old-fashioned. It reminded him of how out of step he was here, in this time.
“This is the Hermes,” Spock told him. “I commissioned it for personal use. It can achieve warp eight.”
“She’s a looker,” Jim said, but he was insincere, distracted, searching Spock’s impassive face. “Spock. I’ve got a bad feeling. Tell me what you’re gonna tell me.”
“It is a fully equipped science vessel, designed to be operated by a single passenger.”
“Spock. Please.”
Spock met eyes muddied by mounting anxiety. He opened the door of the Hermes and entered. He beckoned Kirk to join him, and he did, arms crossed, grudging. Spock herded Kirk into the operator’s seat, and then he leaned against the dash facing him.
“I have developed the formula for returning to our timeline,” he said. Kirk’s demeanor remained stony. “Since returning to New Vulcan 6.3 weeks ago, I have been perfecting the process for wormhole creation, and I believe I can even send you back to the same day you were transported here. I regret that the exact moment cannot be pinpointed.”
“Send me back,” Kirk said. “Alone.” He went an unnatural shade of grey and dropped his gaze to his hands. Spock used a lifetime’s worth of controls to keep his chest from crumpling under the weight of his grief, longing and regret.
“It is better this way.”
Kirk shot to his feet and slammed a fist on the console beside Spock.
“Goddamnit Spock! Tell me how this could possibly be better! Tell me why you’re sending me away from you!” His fists fell open, sapped of strength, and Spock eased him back into the chair. He knelt before him, uncaring of his protesting knees. He held both Kirk’s hands in his.
“Can you honestly tell me that you would be happy here, captaining a small science vessel and coming home to your elderly lover every few months?”
“I can tell you I wouldn’t be happy without you. That’s the truth.”
“If you go, you can rejoin your Spock when he leaves Gol,” Spock said.
“You’re my Spock.”
“Neither of us believes that, t’hy’la.”
“Don’t call me that!” Kirk yanked his hands from Spocks and balled them into fists when he crossed his arms. Spock sighed.
“When you are with me, you think of him,” Spock said, and Kirk’s grimaced as if it the truth were painful to him. “And, Jim, when I am with you, I think of my bondmate, as he was when we got older. With all that happened between us, good and bad.” Spock had told Kirk much of what had come to pass in his time as they spoke into the long nights, savoring each other’s skin and scent and company.
Kirk pressed his lips together to suppress the churning miasma of anger and heartbreak and resentment that Spock felt before Kirk had wrenched from his touch.
Spock rummaged in a pocket and produced a slip of paper, on which he had hand-written a list in cramped script. He pulled Kirk’s right hand out from beneath his armpit and pressed it into his palm.
“These are people, places, and events to avoid,” he said, and Kirk’s eyes flicked up to meet his in surprise. “I find myself… desirous of a different outcome than I saw in my own time, and rather indifferent to warnings against altering the future.”
“Cheating, Spock?” Kirk murmured.
“I have been very selfish in keeping you. I wanted one last touch so badly, and I prolonged your stay with me to gratify my own needs. But it is past time you return to your home.”
“Why can’t you come with? Go back to - to before your Jim was consumed by the Nexus, and just make sure he doesn’t go.”
Spock shook his head and staggered to his feet, bones creaking. He leaned back against the dash again, and Kirk looked up at him from a mottled face. The anger had drained from him, and now he looked only bewildered and impossibly young.
“If you are successful with that list,” he nodded to the page Kirk clutched in trembling fingers, “what transpired in my past will no longer have happened, and what I think of as my time, my life, will cease to exist. There is no place for me there, once you have corrected my mistakes, and made your own. Besides.” Spock gave a very human shrug. “I owe a debt I cannot possibly hope to repay to the people of this universe whose lives I destroyed through my own failure.”
“No,” Kirk said with a shake of his head. “You have to stop doing that to yourself, Spock. Nero destroyed the Kelvin and Vulcan. You bear no burden for that. Where’s the logic in guilt and self-flagellation?”
“In my old age, I have accepted my naturally occurring emotional responses, Jim,” Spock said. “My feelings of culpability are not subject to rationality, and I have reconciled that within myself.”
“Still. You didn’t do anything wrong, Spock.”
Spock nodded in acknowledgement if not agreement. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I can contribute to the rebuilding of Vulcan society here. I can be of use, rather than a - ah, what is your term? - third wheel, when your Spock returns to you. Which he will.”
“How do you know?” Kirk demanded. “I mean, say I go back, and because I’m sitting around waiting for him, I don’t do something that originally caused him to come back to me in your time, and then I’m over there, all alone in the ‘right’ time, and I never see him - or you - again?”
“An external force reunited us following our separation,” Spock said. “Regardless, I have come to believe that I am incapable of achieving Kohlinar, and in the years since you have been parted from me, I have ceased to view that as a personal failing.” Spock let himself lean forward and place a hand on Kirk’s shoulder, as much a gesture of comfort for himself as for Kirk. “Jim,” he said. “Have faith. Spock will return to you. You will know joy.”
Kirk’s breath shook as he exhaled. “And what about you? Don’t you deserve some joy, Spock?”
Spock brushed a lock of hair from Kirk’s forehead.
“There is a Terran author who once wrote, ‘There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.’”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Spock smiled. He bent to kiss the furrowed brow, cup the flushed cheek.
“When I am alone and missing you, I will tell myself that you are happy, and I am wise, and it will be enough.” He moved into the open door, drank in the sight of his young lover’s face. “Everything is set to go. All you have to do is get the craft out of New Vulcan’s atmosphere, and the rest is programmed.”
“Spock.” Kirk’s eyes were bright, and a bittersweet pain flared in Spock’s chest. “I love you. You know that.”
Spock stepped out of the Hermes. He lifted his hand in the ta’al and said, “Live long and prosper, t’hy’la. I have been, as ever, proud to have you at my side.”
The door sealed shut. Spock, heart heavy, told a deck hand to open the hangar doors in preparation for a departure. Outside, he watched the Hermes blast into the sky with a majestic burst of flame from the engines, like a phoenix reborn. When he got into his aircar, he hesitated to turn in the direction of the House of Sarek. He gripped the steering wheel until his fingers ached. He turned east, where no transport roved, where untamed desert beasts still roamed, where the colony partitioned off its borders as if by unspoken mutual consent of all the citizenry. Spock turned east and pressed forward.
He wanted to meet the horizon.
End
Prologue Part I Part II Epilogue
The author Spock quotes is Pearl S. Buck.
The House of Sarek had resources and influence that stretched beyond the bounds of Vulcan-Past. Enough to keep kith and kin in luxury on Earth. Enough to build this sprawling house on New Vulcan. Enough to commission a personal space craft, if it was deemed logical. Spock remembered his Kirk’s reaction when he first realized he’d married into aristocracy some time after the incident with V’Ger: “Does this mean I’m your consort?” he’d asked with a cheeky grin.
This Kirk, the one currently stretching in a sensuous display on Spock’s bed, was not his Kirk. Not yet. They had not bonded. They had not gone through death and destruction and come out the other side to meet one another again. They had not fought and forgiven and parted and reunited so many times that Spock didn’t care to keep count.
He’d made many mistakes in his life.
This Kirk, young and supple and beautiful, belonged to someone else. Belonged to a Spock whose myriad missteps were only choices waiting to be made instead of regrets to be counted like so many worthless coins.
Spock had great plans for him.
Kirk rose, all naked splendor, and crossed the room to sling his arms round Spock’s neck and plant a kiss to the side of his head. Spock leaned back in his chair, away from the console he had been bending formulas in. Kirk propped his chin on Spock’s shoulder, and Spock rubbed Kirk’s forearm where it circled his neck.
“So why’d you ask me to take off today?” Kirk asked. “You know I can’t stand a mystery.”
Spock closed his eyes. When he opened them again he turned around in his chair and stood, setting his hands on Kirk’s shoulders. Kirk looked up into his face with those mercurial eyes - a honeyed green now, when he was feeling happy and a little amorous.
“Wash and dress, Jim,” Spock said, “and come with me.”
While Kirk did as told, Spock left the bedroom and stood in front of window that took up the entire width of the living space wall. Outside, the sands of this planet rolled a dull red far into the distance until it met the hazy horizon. It was not Vulcan, and it would never be. He feared his people would never recover from the wound of Vulcan’s absence, would never stand on these sands and feel an elemental belonging. He knew it was an illogical fear; new generations would be born here, bred beneath this bruise-colored sky, and they would never know the pain of the death of their home. These days (as his human colleagues might once have said, while they still lived), Spock was comfortable with the occasional bouts of illogic inherent in his nature.
In the aircar on the way to the space port, Kirk tried to wheedle from Spock their destination, his purpose, his plans, but Spock remained coy and kept conversation maddeningly circular. By the time they were at the port, Kirk had threatened to tear out his own hair and wore a pout the size of one of New Vulcan’s moons. He brightened when Spock pulled into port parking.
“We going somewhere?” he asked. “Pre-honeymoon, maybe?” He winked. Spock gifted him a small smile. They got out of the car and Spock led them to a private dock, had his ID scanned, and made his way down the long indoor pier that housed shuttle-sized crafts. “C’mon, Spock,” Kirk said then, amusement having evaporated. Spock forced himself to look at him. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Spock stopped in front of a large door and ushered Kirk through it. In the large space sat a small, sleek, modern craft. To Spock’s eye, it looked clunky and old-fashioned. It reminded him of how out of step he was here, in this time.
“This is the Hermes,” Spock told him. “I commissioned it for personal use. It can achieve warp eight.”
“She’s a looker,” Jim said, but he was insincere, distracted, searching Spock’s impassive face. “Spock. I’ve got a bad feeling. Tell me what you’re gonna tell me.”
“It is a fully equipped science vessel, designed to be operated by a single passenger.”
“Spock. Please.”
Spock met eyes muddied by mounting anxiety. He opened the door of the Hermes and entered. He beckoned Kirk to join him, and he did, arms crossed, grudging. Spock herded Kirk into the operator’s seat, and then he leaned against the dash facing him.
“I have developed the formula for returning to our timeline,” he said. Kirk’s demeanor remained stony. “Since returning to New Vulcan 6.3 weeks ago, I have been perfecting the process for wormhole creation, and I believe I can even send you back to the same day you were transported here. I regret that the exact moment cannot be pinpointed.”
“Send me back,” Kirk said. “Alone.” He went an unnatural shade of grey and dropped his gaze to his hands. Spock used a lifetime’s worth of controls to keep his chest from crumpling under the weight of his grief, longing and regret.
“It is better this way.”
Kirk shot to his feet and slammed a fist on the console beside Spock.
“Goddamnit Spock! Tell me how this could possibly be better! Tell me why you’re sending me away from you!” His fists fell open, sapped of strength, and Spock eased him back into the chair. He knelt before him, uncaring of his protesting knees. He held both Kirk’s hands in his.
“Can you honestly tell me that you would be happy here, captaining a small science vessel and coming home to your elderly lover every few months?”
“I can tell you I wouldn’t be happy without you. That’s the truth.”
“If you go, you can rejoin your Spock when he leaves Gol,” Spock said.
“You’re my Spock.”
“Neither of us believes that, t’hy’la.”
“Don’t call me that!” Kirk yanked his hands from Spocks and balled them into fists when he crossed his arms. Spock sighed.
“When you are with me, you think of him,” Spock said, and Kirk’s grimaced as if it the truth were painful to him. “And, Jim, when I am with you, I think of my bondmate, as he was when we got older. With all that happened between us, good and bad.” Spock had told Kirk much of what had come to pass in his time as they spoke into the long nights, savoring each other’s skin and scent and company.
Kirk pressed his lips together to suppress the churning miasma of anger and heartbreak and resentment that Spock felt before Kirk had wrenched from his touch.
Spock rummaged in a pocket and produced a slip of paper, on which he had hand-written a list in cramped script. He pulled Kirk’s right hand out from beneath his armpit and pressed it into his palm.
“These are people, places, and events to avoid,” he said, and Kirk’s eyes flicked up to meet his in surprise. “I find myself… desirous of a different outcome than I saw in my own time, and rather indifferent to warnings against altering the future.”
“Cheating, Spock?” Kirk murmured.
“I have been very selfish in keeping you. I wanted one last touch so badly, and I prolonged your stay with me to gratify my own needs. But it is past time you return to your home.”
“Why can’t you come with? Go back to - to before your Jim was consumed by the Nexus, and just make sure he doesn’t go.”
Spock shook his head and staggered to his feet, bones creaking. He leaned back against the dash again, and Kirk looked up at him from a mottled face. The anger had drained from him, and now he looked only bewildered and impossibly young.
“If you are successful with that list,” he nodded to the page Kirk clutched in trembling fingers, “what transpired in my past will no longer have happened, and what I think of as my time, my life, will cease to exist. There is no place for me there, once you have corrected my mistakes, and made your own. Besides.” Spock gave a very human shrug. “I owe a debt I cannot possibly hope to repay to the people of this universe whose lives I destroyed through my own failure.”
“No,” Kirk said with a shake of his head. “You have to stop doing that to yourself, Spock. Nero destroyed the Kelvin and Vulcan. You bear no burden for that. Where’s the logic in guilt and self-flagellation?”
“In my old age, I have accepted my naturally occurring emotional responses, Jim,” Spock said. “My feelings of culpability are not subject to rationality, and I have reconciled that within myself.”
“Still. You didn’t do anything wrong, Spock.”
Spock nodded in acknowledgement if not agreement. “Nevertheless,” he said, “I can contribute to the rebuilding of Vulcan society here. I can be of use, rather than a - ah, what is your term? - third wheel, when your Spock returns to you. Which he will.”
“How do you know?” Kirk demanded. “I mean, say I go back, and because I’m sitting around waiting for him, I don’t do something that originally caused him to come back to me in your time, and then I’m over there, all alone in the ‘right’ time, and I never see him - or you - again?”
“An external force reunited us following our separation,” Spock said. “Regardless, I have come to believe that I am incapable of achieving Kohlinar, and in the years since you have been parted from me, I have ceased to view that as a personal failing.” Spock let himself lean forward and place a hand on Kirk’s shoulder, as much a gesture of comfort for himself as for Kirk. “Jim,” he said. “Have faith. Spock will return to you. You will know joy.”
Kirk’s breath shook as he exhaled. “And what about you? Don’t you deserve some joy, Spock?”
Spock brushed a lock of hair from Kirk’s forehead.
“There is a Terran author who once wrote, ‘There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.’”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
Spock smiled. He bent to kiss the furrowed brow, cup the flushed cheek.
“When I am alone and missing you, I will tell myself that you are happy, and I am wise, and it will be enough.” He moved into the open door, drank in the sight of his young lover’s face. “Everything is set to go. All you have to do is get the craft out of New Vulcan’s atmosphere, and the rest is programmed.”
“Spock.” Kirk’s eyes were bright, and a bittersweet pain flared in Spock’s chest. “I love you. You know that.”
Spock stepped out of the Hermes. He lifted his hand in the ta’al and said, “Live long and prosper, t’hy’la. I have been, as ever, proud to have you at my side.”
The door sealed shut. Spock, heart heavy, told a deck hand to open the hangar doors in preparation for a departure. Outside, he watched the Hermes blast into the sky with a majestic burst of flame from the engines, like a phoenix reborn. When he got into his aircar, he hesitated to turn in the direction of the House of Sarek. He gripped the steering wheel until his fingers ached. He turned east, where no transport roved, where untamed desert beasts still roamed, where the colony partitioned off its borders as if by unspoken mutual consent of all the citizenry. Spock turned east and pressed forward.
He wanted to meet the horizon.
End
Prologue Part I Part II Epilogue
The author Spock quotes is Pearl S. Buck.