spohkh | Appointments

_{[ Kirk looked at him, at those wavering hands, and sighed. This was
his fault. Well, not fault, but... god, things were never going to get
better if they didn't do this, he just knew it. He reached out, taking
Spock's hands and placing them on either side of his temples. ]}

Please, Spock. We need to do this...

[Spock's breath hitches, then with an almost pained expression, nods.]

Very well... Jim...
My mind to your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts...
[The Vulcan melds them, blending their minds together as they stare up into the space of Jim's consciousness.]

_{[ As all the times before, the world he made for himself was a
beautiful universe sparkling with stars like jewels. He had his inner most
universe, those stars that circled him close, he the sun, and off in the
distance the super nova that was Pike and the dark shadow of a comet that
was Khan. These things would never leave, of that he was sure, but in time
they might dim.}

He walked/floated/what have you over to his person universe, the jewels glowing and floating in their orbits. In the center was the yellow sun, Kirk and... the blue jewel that was Spock. It sat on the innermost orbit, hugging the flares that came off his sun, the flares themselves caressing the blue jewel. ]

You see?

Spock stares, completely enraptured by the sight in front of him.
It was absolutely beautiful.

"Jim, I am uncertain as to what I am looking at... will you explain?"

His heart was doing something funny, but that was illogical. No one felt with their heart, they felt with their mind...
But why did it suddenly feel tight and nervous?

How to explain it though? He kind of understood it himself and he kind of didn't. But the heart was funny that way, wasn't it? And it was the heart, he'd known that for a long time, he just didn't want to admit it because... a lot of things.

He sighed, looking towards the super nova that was pike, and again the reasons hit home, the reasons he knew and had batted away and kept buried because it was easier to live in his self-imposed exile than it was to accept his feelings or analyze them or deal with them.

"It means I really care about you, idiot," he said softly, licking his lips. "I really, really care about you and that scares the ever living shit out of me."

He shuddered, wrapping his arms around himself, turning away from the nova and the things it represented, his eyes flicking to the glimmering, pale jewel of a star that could barely be made out that he knew deep in his soul to be his mother.

Spock watches the colours and the space move around them. He wants to ask so many things, the why's and how's and wanting to delve into Jim's feelings, to know his very heart and soul...

But he waits. He allows the silence to encompass them as he inches closer. If his hand happens to brush against his Captain's in a gentle 'kiss', then so be it.
It's only after that he breaks the silence, still watching the stars. "And what do you want to do about that?"

"That's the thing. I don't know," he admitted, not withdrawing from Spock, but not leaning into him. He knew if he did, he would break, he would fall utterly and he wasn't prepared for that, not yet.

The worlds he had made for himself continued to swirl and flow, his feelings undeniable to the depths of his psyche, the place represented here. It was a truth, a hard one on many levels, when he had spent so many years locking those things about himself away and ignoring them. It was easier than succumbing to them, to living through heart break and disappointment.

"I've... never really known. I just know I've never accepted it, because I was... I guess I felt I wasn't deserving of it," he admitted, and pointed out to the glimmering, pale-red jewel of his mother in the distance. "If I was, why is she so far away?" he asked him, then turned to look at Pike, and the pain hit new, the sun that was himself flaring as the pain of loss burned bright. "It just hurts..." He had loved, and it had been torn away from him.

Spock looks up at the stars, and back at the broken man before him. It's sad... and makes Spock feel all the more protective of him. But, something had to change.

"I realize that you are in pain Jim, but you were never one to allow fear to cloud your judgement."

"Really? You can say that, after everything that just happened with Khan and Marcus?" he asked him, turning to look at him.

He had asked the same of Bones, and gotten his answer, though he didn't really believe it. He didn't understand how all of them could still trust him, believe in him, when he had made such a grave blunder, nearly killed them all. Hell, he'd died, and he'd hurt so many because of that. He'd made Spock feel the same pain he had when Pike passed...

"I'm not good at loving people."

"On the contrary, Jim. I would accuse you of loving 'too much', but then you might think me ludicrous."

Spock rounded on Jim. They might have to duke it out, right here and now and get to the bottom of this. It's been two years, two years and Jim is still in crippling emotional pain.

"I believe there is something else that we need to address right now."

"And what's that?" he asked him, floating over to the little universe he had made for himself and taking a seat upon the sun, watching the planets twirl and tick into a time even he did not understand - planets swirling about their lives, headless of himself.

"It is a matter of blame."

The Vulcan slowly wanders around, every now and again stopping at a particular star to pay it some attention, but then moving on. "You still blame yourself for what happened. But it is not just any blame... it has crippled you."

"I know we're inside my head, Spock, but I'm not in the mood for being cryptic or for riddles," he growled, watching Spock, his little sun actually turning him around as he sat cross-legged on it, a god carelessly using his creations.

Spock had some modicum of control here as well...

"You need examples? Very well."

Images started to float above their heads, each once more violent than the next. "You blame yourself for every presumed failure. You blame yourself for Vulcan, for the ships lost to Nero, for Pike's death and for the death of members of your crew."

"Jim, you claim that you do not love well, but you love so much that every loss in your life affects you so harshly that you allow it to sweep you away. Instead of dealing with it, you become much like our friend McCoy... deferring to alcohol to forget.
Or in your special case, sex and careless, suicidal actions that one would call having a 'death wish'."

The images swirled by, each one painful. He kept saying he could have saved them, that he should have, that he should have acted sooner. He winced away from them, not wanting to see. The image of Vulcan disappearing still haunted him, and more than once he had pondered Khan's words, and he wondered if, somehow, he could have found a kinder fate for him, and wondered how he could have been so blinded by Marcus.

"Yeah, and what's your point?" he asked, falling back on his usual belligerence, his shields coming up because humor failed him at this juncture.

"My point is, you fault yourself needlessly, and my tolerance for your illogic has come to an end."

Spock started to stalk towards him.

Kirk tense, seeing him stalk towards him. He prepared to bolt, wondering what the Vulcan was up to, only now seeming to realize that Spock had the much stronger mental control than he did, especially right now. God, had this been a really bad idea?

"Really? After all this time? I had bets it would end at six months," he quipped, another fall back, his blue eyes wary.

"Indeed? Perhaps I have been too tolerant with you."

The Vulcan crowds Jim's space, then all the stars go out. They're now on the empty bridge of the Enterprise... back in their uniforms as the viewscreen showed space moving by.

"Like most math problems, you solve it by discovering the root. What do you believe is the root of your problem, Captain? It would seem to me that the root is survival. You feel guilty because you survived. Something that you have done right from birth."

The shift was sudden, throwing him for a moment as he looked around. He licked his lips and settled into his chair, the action oddly comforting to him as the stars swept by. His hands clenched on the arms of his chair, and he looked up at Spock. His look was somewhat accusatory, but another part of him knew what Spock said was true. He felt guilty that he survived when others had not.

He might have been born with that guilt. He had survived, and his father had not. His mother had known it, and she never saw him. She traveled amongst the stars and left Kirk chained to the earth, a burden to his Uncle who had never wanted him.

"Should I not feel guilty?" he demanded of him. "Isn't it true that I could have prevented everything from the last year if I had just listened? Or if I had made another decision?"

"And what would you tell me if I said that I felt guilty for the death of my mother? That if not for me, then maybe Vulcan could have survived. Had I not taken the time to question a cadet who only tried to save a planet."

The Vulcan's eyes narrowed. Jim wasn't the only one harbouring guilt. But out of the two of them, who was dealing with it better? Spock had learned to move on. But he needed Jim to move with him now.

Kirk watched him, realizing what he was saying. But in the months and years that had passed since then, he had never blamed Spock for what happened. If anything, he blamed Nero and his selfish desires that had more or less driven him mad. Spock had done all that he could, though admittedly maybe he could have listened faster. But still...

And maybe that was kind of the point, wasn't it? He had done all he could, and some results he simply couldn't keep from happening. The realization did nothing to ease the feeling in his gut, not yet, but there seemed to be some sort of appeasement, a willingness to at least listen to that rationale rather than totally reject it from the start.

"It doesn't mean that some things that happened weren't my fault, Spock. On some level, I'm responsible for some of the things that happened." Like taking those "torpedos" onto his ship.

"You are a Captain of a starship, every part of your being is meant to be in command of the Enterprise. Of course you are responsible for more than everyone else, and that mistakes will rest on your shoulders."

The Vulcan takes a step closer to Jim in the chair. "But you are far from alone. You internalize everything. Allow the ones you love to share your burden."

His mouth twisted wryly.

"But why should they? I'm the Captain, like you said. Ultimately, they're my decisions and no one else'," he shook his head. "Besides, you have your own burdens, don't you? It's my job as Captain to help you shoulder them, not the other way around."

"Section 4.2 of the starfleet command manual states that though the Captain makes the final decision, it is only made when the rest of the command crew has been made part of the deciding process."

Spock moves, kneeling down beside Jim in the chair. "Jim, you are not alone. You were never meant to be alone. Being Captain does not isolate you from the rest of the crew. You see this, do you not?"

Isolation was protection though. It was his actions, his decisions that caused everything, and if anyone had to go down on this ship it would be himself. His crew came before everything, be it in real, life-and-death danger or against the powers of Starfleet's martial courts. These people, all of them, were his family in a way he had never experienced, and losing even one of them would just... destroy him, as Pike's loss nearly had.

He reached out, finding Spock's fingers and gripping them tightly, trembling despite himself. "Yeah, but... do you forgive me? Did any of them forgive me?" he asked quietly, looking to Spock, pleading in his eyes. Even now, he fully expected to be cast out when he returned home, for his crew to blame him rightly so for the poor decisions that had nearly lead them all to their deaths.

He squeezed tighter, knuckles white, suddenly afraid that to let go would mean that Spock would vanish, leave him behind. And the loss of Spock was not something he could imagine, nor survive.

"Why is it you stay by me?"

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