Disclaimer: (c) 2006 Rabble Rouser. All rights reserved. This work may not be archived, reproduced, or distributed in any format without prior written permission from the author. This is an amateur nonprofit work, and is not intended to infringe on copyrights held by Paramount or any other lawful holder.

Thanks to Djinn for her beta!

* * *

I see a man climbing up the steep stairs carved into Mount Seleya, his steps jerky, slow, his shoulders hunched. He seems to me an old man. He's still a doll-sized figure, but in the thin air, every detail is laser sharp, and with a jolt, I recognize him--Admiral James Kirk. Vulcan is like that. Pitiless in its clarity.

Then he glances up toward me and straightens, and his steps become brisk and purposeful. When he reaches me, he smiles, and for a moment, I see a young boy superimposed on the weary face. The smile dies, slowly, reluctantly, and I wonder if he mistook me at first for someone else.

"Chapel." His voice is raspy, as if the heat and thinness of the air has scraped at his lungs.

"Admiral." My voice has the same huskiness. In my case, I know it's from going on crying jags since I heard that Spock died. And since I found out he's alive. But I know it's not the same with him. I can't imagine tears from James T. Kirk. I saw him after his brother had died, watched him hold his wife's hand as she died, but never saw him shed a tear.

Understand, the man isn't cold. You could see it on his face all those years ago, the look of one who'd taken a bone-cracking punch to the chin but was too old to cry and young enough to pretend it was only a glancing blow. Of course, he's older now. We all are.

As I look into his face, I feel tears threaten, a prickling in the back of my eyes, but somehow in front of him, they won't materialize. It would be like asking for pity. And I have so little right to that compared to him. And no need of it.

The tears morph into a more complex sensation--a tangled skein somewhere under my breastbone made up of a sense of homecoming, relief, and bitter resentment all at once. Because he's my captain and always will be. Because I know he made the difference and always will. Because he was my rival. Because at command, I had a chance to know another side of Jim Kirk. And something else, a sense of kinship that wasn't possible before. Because in many ways I've done a lot of growing up to catch up to him.

I reach out and grasp his hand and squeeze, and he sighs like he's relieved, as if he's needed that tactile contact for a long time. But he tilts his head looking at me through narrowed eyes, as if bemused at who it's coming from. He lets go of my hand, I think to pull away, but then he just leans closer and tucks my arm under his, as if securing something precious.

"Why are you here?" Each word comes out crisply, with none of the earlier hoarseness. An order. A demand for information softened only by the solid warmth of his body pressed to mine and the intimacy of his voice at my ear.

But then we've turned into the temple portico, and we're likely to encounter others. Humans here must keep their voices close to keep them private.

"Amanda asked me to come. We've kept in touch ever since the time on the ship and--"

"Let me rephrase that. Why did they let you come here? We're radioactive. I'd think Starfleet wouldn't want to risk contamination."

"Cartwright."

"Ah." The one word conveys both wry amusement and suspicion.

"He's worried about you. He wants you to come home."

"All is forgiven." He says it airily, waving his hand in the air, and I feel angry at his nonchalance. His lightness with me.

"Cartwright thinks something can be salvaged. He said the Federation needs Jim Kirk." That last comes out almost mocking, and I wonder what's wrong with me today, why everything about him is setting me on edge.

"Flattering, if unconvincing. Still, you can tell Cartwright the prodigals will come home...eventually. I believe in taking responsibility, Christine. And it's the only hope for the others."

"That if you fall on your sword the Gods will consider it enough of a sacrifice?"

He gives a little shrug as if it isn't important. As if Starfleet hasn't been his whole life. "So you came because Cartwright asked."

"No, Cartwright is why I was able to come. I came because Amanda asked me, and I desperately wanted to see--to see all of you."

He smiles tightly at that, as if sure who it is I care about seeing, and I feel my face tighten in response. Does he really think I don't care about the rest of them? Len, Ny, Hikaru, Scotty, Pavel, even him? I don't know what I expected. That I'd be welcomed with joy?

"And because I want to help." My voice has risen in anger and frustration, and a passing Vulcan in the white robes of an acolyte admonishes me with a look. I pull up short, forcing Jim to a stop. "You don't trust me."

I was interrogated when Jim Kirk and his band of mutineers disappeared. Working in Emergency Ops, I was in the perfect position to have helped them, and anyone who was ever a member of Kirk's crew was suspect on general principles. It wasn't pleasant, but I had nothing to hide. No one had asked for my help. He seems to instantly read what was behind my statement. The man can be spooky that way. I never could seem to manage my invisible act with him.

"Any reason I should have trusted you. Included you? You may have kept in touch with Amanda, but not with us."

"Not in your charmed circle, I guess." I shrug, trying to model it on his own gesture, telegraph to him how little I care. Even though I care too much what he thinks of me--just as much as he does about regaining the stars. I'm hoping to make him angry, as angry as he's made me. Anger's better than his pretense he doesn't care.

He spins me around and presses me to a column. Almost slams me into it. "You could have been. And you were in Uhura's, and Sulu's, and Chekov's. But you pulled away from all of us." His fingers dig into my arms, and I welcome the pain. Better to feel that than what I've been feeling for months. He lets go and backs away from me, and the look he gives me makes me cold even through the stifling heat of this place. I rub my arms, and as he takes that in, his look turns a bit remorseful. A bit.

"You haven't asked about Spock."

"Amanda's kept me informed. She picked me up at the space port. I'm staying with her and Sarek."

"She didn't tell me you were coming."

"You mean warn you? Amanda didn't have much notice herself. I got on the first shuttle as soon as I was cleared. I'm sure she didn't want to disappoint you if I couldn't make it." I bite down on the word "disappoint." It really is a good thing Spock and I never got together. I make a poor Vulcan. Even if Amanda insists it's not something Sarek has ever asked of her.

"Have you seen Spock yet?" he asks.

"No."

He stares past me, his features clouded. The look that hides his pain. "He's not the Spock we knew. Not yet. He recognizes us, our faces, names--the memories are there, I'm sure of it--but the emotions? It doesn't seem to connect all up."

I nod. "It's why Amanda wanted me to come. She thought...past associations and associates, anyone ever bound to him emotionally..." Even if it's always been one way. I smile and shrug dismissively. "That it could help reach him." And Amanda's worried, worried that his teachers here prefer this detached Spock, want him to stay that way.

His face twists a moment, then shifts into a bland expression that bodes trouble. "So what's the plan? You kiss--"

"Jim, please don't." Using his first name is a potent weapon, but one that I recognize can blow up in my face. I'm not sure if reminding him we were on the verge of friendship or more will soften or harden his reactions. But the past months at Emergency Ops taught me lessons medicine never did. That sometimes letting the dice fly is the only way to even get in the game.

I've surprised him. It surprises me how easily his first name comes. I hadn't had much chance to practice it before I started pulling away. He wasn't wrong about that. Well, not much chance these past months to practice it out loud.

"I'm sorry, Chris--I know how you feel about Spock. That was uncalled for. I don't want to hurt you."

I smile at what he calls me. From Chapel to Christine to Chris. All in the course of one conversation. I'm not doing too shabbily. "Actually, I don't think you know how I feel about Spock these days. I know you're hurting. First David. Then the Enterprise. The strain of Spock's death and Len's madness. I'm sorry I pulled away. I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'd like to make it up to you. Friends?"

"No, not friends." He softens his rebuff with a smile. "But I'm glad you're here." His smile broadens and expands to his eyes, and suddenly I don't feel the inner chill or outward heat. I feel as if I've already gotten what I came for. I feel warm.

Why is it that I think that's precisely how he wants me to feel?

* * *

I've barely been on Vulcan for two hours and already every bit of exposed skin feels sandblasted, and if I open my mouth to take in deeper breaths, I inhale dust, making me cough. The wind kicks up, blowing grit up into my eyes that makes them tear so much my vision is blurred. I wind a scarf around my face as an improvised filter and jog to catch up to Jim, who's already halfway to the entrance--he doesn't even glance back. He's leading me to Spock, and, no doubt, is sure that's incentive enough to keep up. It's almost as if he's running away from me, as if I imagined our brief moment of connection. And maybe I did. I can't be sure of him. That's the problem.

I almost call out, ask him to wait, but some stubborn streak just makes me dig in and put on a burst of speed to catch up with him. I grab his arm to stop him, and he looks back with a wicked grin.

"Need a rest, Chapel?"

I struggle to get the words out while trying to catch my breath, bent over with my hands on my knees. "What...makes...you...think...that?"

His face takes on a more sober expression, and he lightly touches me on the arm. "Sorry, I forgot how much this place can take out of you if you haven't had a chance to get acclimated."

He pulled this when we first met. I sought him out to make a personal pitch to be taken on his ship as crew, not caring it was irregular. I knew the Enterprise would be heading out to deep space and could take me closer to where Roger had disappeared than any private ship could. He claimed to be pressed for time and told me that if I wanted to talk to him it would have to be on the run. I didn't expect him to mean that literally.

At least today he doesn't feel the need to push, and he slows to a fast walk, even if he still stays ahead of me. Back then he threw me off balance with the questions he tossed my way, and I had to grit my teeth to keep playing the mild, sweet, pleading subordinate as I struggled to match his pace: Why the Enterprise? Did I see myself making a career in Starfleet? Why nursing when I already had a post-doc in bioresearch? Every once in a while, he'd pull up and ask if I needed a rest, giving me a sly smile as if including me in some joke.

He already had the reputation of a ladies' man and had the eye-catching good looks to go with the role. Though he wasn't what I'd call flirtatious with me, there was a cockiness in the very way he strutted though the halls. He wasn't my type, and yet I found myself wondering why I was even concerned about that. He annoyed me too much to make a good first impression on me. Fortunately, though, I did make a good impression on him. He told me years later he'd found that direct appeal gutsy, and appreciated my loyalty to my fiancé.

When I mentioned that to Len, he told me that Jim had even suggested slotting me into the science division, either biology or archeology given my doctorates, despite my nurse's rating. But Jim left the decision to Spock, seeing it as his prerogative as Science Officer, and Spock wasn't favorably impressed by someone who'd go around the usual channels. Nor, I think, did he trust someone motivated to join the ship for such personal and emotional reasons.

"And that darlin'," Len, told me, with a wink, "by itself was enough to make me want to snatch you up for medical." Spock's disdain was as good as a recommendation for Len.

Spock had rejected me sight unseen. Thus setting the pattern for our relationship. So I first came aboard the Enterprise as a spanking new nurse and brevet ensign rather than a seasoned scientist. It might have been better if I had known about Spock's initial reaction to me from the start. Maybe I wouldn't have fallen in love with him at first sight? And back when I was young and stupid, I was a big believer in love at first sight. And first impressions.

The view from here is spectacular, but forbidding. The landscape below us looks like the Grand Canyon on Earth, or, given the vastness and reddish sky above us, Valles Marineris on Mars. Wherever I look, there is nothing but sterile shades--swirls and layers of brown, grays, reds, and yellows--not a spot of green. Vulcan is like ancient Egypt. Small oases of green along sea coasts and river banks--step one foot away from the precarious strips of life and you're in desert. Stark. Monumental. Like the people and their creations. The massive blocky structure before us is carved right out of the mountain. The very scale of it oppresses me. I feel like I'm having the life sucked out of me by this planet before I'm even over the threshold of my destination.

Jim leads us down stairs, then the twist and turns of corridors so quickly I barely have any time to take in roughly hewn walls lined with art and artifacts that look like they belong in a museum. He finally stops at a door and leans beside it. "He's in there. I'll wait for you in the next room." He pauses a moment and reaches out to give my shoulder a quick squeeze. "Don't expect too much or be hurt if he doesn't recognize you at first. It took him a while with all of us."

"Jim." But he's already turned away, so I square my shoulders and lightly knock at the door.

"Spock?" I call softly. I hear an achingly familiar voice say, "Enter."

Spock's back is turned to me. He's working at a computer console. He turns, and I can't help it, my breath catches at my throat. It's one thing to hear that someone you've loved has been killed, only to find out it was a mistake. It's another to learn they did die and see them after they've been raised from the dead. I feel a tingle down my spine, the awe this temple couldn't instill, but the sight of this flesh and blood figure can. I move closer, searching his features for a trace of, if not the man I adored, then the colleague I never quite knew well enough to call friend.

Can I even claim I loved him? Vulcans say "Nothing unreal exists," and right now nothing seems more unreal than what I felt for him. I think part of what intrigued me about Spock was the whole mystique about the bond, the mind meld. To know, to know absolutely and unshakably you were loved. What would it matter if he couldn't say it out loud when you could feel it under your skin? "I love you" are just words--those things that make lies possible. And Vulcans claim they can't lie. But I shared consciousness once with this man and know it's not that simple. Among other things, you'd have to acknowledge truth to yourself, and Vulcans are masters of denial.

He turns toward me, and I'm reminded of the other side of what it means to be Vulcan. His eyes are like chips of stone, expressionless in a way I have never seen even when he returned to the ship after undergoing the kolinahr discipline. No, not cold, but empty. He comes closer, and I see something spark, the look Spock got when he was sniffing out a mystery.

"I know you." His voice isn't mechanical, exactly. Not the kolinahr voice. More rusty, unused.

I wonder who it is he knows: The hapless, moonstruck nurse who couldn't help stalking him? The doctor who, after that greeting when he came back from Gol, avoided him--even when, especially when, he decided to experiment with those emotions he had a new regard for? The commander who finally had begun to feel at ease around him, once she'd finally became more at ease with herself? I certainly don't feel at ease now--I feel my heart pounding.

"Yes, Spock. It's Christine." I see him frown and amend that. "Christine Chapel. We knew each other on the ship."

"My mother says you are her friend. And the admiral has also mentioned you." He frowns, as if he can't reconcile what Amanda has said about me with what Jim has said. He stares at me. "You love me. The human Mister Spock. And the Vulcan." He gives a little nod of satisfaction. Equation solved.

Of all the memories of me he could have dredged up, that's one brain synapse I wish had never fired. I'm halfway out the door before I get my panic under control and stop. He looks so puzzled. This Spock isn't trying to hurt me. That's never Spock's intention.

I make my voice gentle and curse the tears that well up. "That was a long time ago." And he told me back then he couldn't love me. But I don't say it out loud.

He walks to me and rubs under my eyes with a finger. "These are tears?" His voice has a detached curiosity, as if tears are something he's read about somewhere, but never directly witnessed.

"Yes." Nurse Chapel would have reached out to stroke his cheek, captured his hand, done anything to prolong the moment. Doctor Chapel would have run. I don't have either option. This is Jim Kirk's best friend. And Len's. And Amanda and Sarek's son. I wait but, thank God, that seems to exhaust his inquiries for now. "I'll come back. I need to...I'll come."

"Are we friends?"

It seems an odd question. I can't imagine the old Spock asking it. The one I first knew wouldn't admit he had friends. The one I knew later knew too well what a friend was to include me as one. No, not friends, but like family we're stuck with each other. "Maybe we will be." Why not? Stranger things have happened. I flee.

I'm alone in the hallway and so I indulge in a good cry, making sure I'm all cried out before facing Jim. Confronting him. I don't intend to give him a chance to divert me or throw me off balance. So I don't knock and barely close the door to the adjoining room before I begin to speak.

"You knew, didn't you? That Genesis could bring Spock back to life."

"What makes you say that?" Jim Kirk doesn't usually temporize that way. He doesn't try to completely bullshit me, I'll give him that. Not that he seems particularly fazed by the question. But then he knows I was on the review board that approved the Marcus's grant. He knows I not only know what Genesis is, but that I understand the science behind it. I have to admit I'm a bit surprised he knew enough of the science to make this wild guess.

"Because you stole the ship. You didn't need to do that to bring Len back to Vulcan, just take a shuttle here. You wouldn't have needed to sacrifice your careers by venturing back to the Genesis planet. None of that was necessary to set Len free, to give Spock's katra to the Hall of Thought."

"No one else has even guessed."

"And you don't plan to tell them. Why?" Part of me is appalled no one even thought to ask why they had to take the risks. He beckons and they follow. It's as simple as that.

"At first because I didn't want to create false hope. Now, because I'm not sure what I brought back from Genesis."

"I don't understand."

"That isn't just Spock revived. That being in there was born on Genesis and matured with the planet. Did he have a soul of his own?" He shook his head, his eyes focused tightly on mine. "Did we destroy a new soul in the fal-tor-pan? Or restore one?"

"Jim, no."

"I didn't hesitate, didn't bring it up for debate. I told myself it didn't matter. That it was just an empty shell we were bringing back to Vulcan. He didn't speak, seemed almost catatonic. But he was a newborn. Maybe he just needed time to learn."

I swallow hard and rush to say anything that would erase the look on his face. "But it would have been different if it had the body of a newborn. It had been cheated of half a life, anyway." I choke at my own words, and Jim smiles bitterly back at me.

"So I told myself. But the truth is I wanted Spock back. I wanted my friend back. And if I have to pay for that in my own personal hell, I can at least make sure Bones and the others don't have to pay that part of the price with me. So if you can bring him back the rest of the way, I don't see I have any right to complain."

His face is the bleakest I can ever remember. It's the face of someone not just convinced he doesn't deserve forgiveness, but that he'd think less of anyone who offered it. I can't say anything in the face of that, but I can't leave him alone with it, either. So I do the only thing I can. I slip into his arms and hold on tight. I half expect him to push me away, but instead we hold onto each other until what I feel, at least, is a lot more complicated than comfort given and received. Until I start wanting too much, so I let go.

* * *

I glance enviously at Amanda gliding serene and cool by my side despite her many layers of clothing. We're going together to see the rather formidable woman in charge of Spock's rehabilitation and I wish I felt more commanding in this civilian getup. I realize I've used my uniform as armor, that it's as if it allows me to don a different, more authoritative persona I still haven't completely let be a part of me without it. But Cartwright asked me to keep my Starfleet affiliation low key while here. It doesn't help that I barely stepped over the threshold of Sarek's compound before feeling grubby, sweaty, and as if a boa constrictor had settled across my chest.

Amanda gives me an amused look. "One eventually adjusts--when I visit Terra, I find it uncomfortably cold and clammy. It helps if you don't set the atmospherics to Earth normal."

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be able to sleep. It's not as if I will be here that long."

"This is Spock's home." She lightly squeezes my arm. When I start, she drops her hand as if taking my reaction as a rebuff.

I link arms with her in apology and try to put part of what took me aback into words. "I never got the impression he cared...that is, that he would want to ever settle on Vulcan."

Not that I could ever say I had a tête-à-tête with Spock on the subject. It makes me uncomfortable to think that I know Spock less well than Amanda seems to think. Or maybe than she would hope? I don't suppose half-overheard conversations with his bud Jim counts as shared intimacy? Or what I gleaned from Len's less than discreet rants. Len sometimes treated me like I was part of the bulkhead--forgetting this bulkhead has ears.

Something in her face eases. Does she think this means I'd allow my take on Vulcan to be influenced by Spock's? I admit I've felt troubled about my friendship with Amanda at times. I didn't want to use his mother to get close to Spock. I was careful not to bring up Spock to her, or to be the one to offer to get together. It wasn't hard, back then on the ship, to pick up on how I felt about Spock, though, and I think that was exactly why she felt drawn to me. I was grateful that she never tried to play matchmaker by throwing Spock and me together. Maybe since we served together, she didn't see the need? But sometimes, like now, I felt her give a gentle nudge, as if I was the party who needed urging to seal the deal.

"He was raised here, it's in his blood," she says.

Earth, too, is in his blood, though. Yet unlike everyone else on board--even the Vulcans--Spock never went into raptures about his home planet, or gave a nostalgic sigh on a landing party because a planet reminded him of it. I can't imagine Jim Kirk settling on Earth, or anywhere else, because in the end, it's space that's in his blood. But Spock seems to not be attached to any one place--not even space. I don't think even the Enterprise was ever home--not the way it was to Jim. I think Spock lives very much in his head; it's Starfleet, its ideals that call to him.

"But it's in Starfleet that he's felt the most at home, I think," she says, startling me again.

It's uncanny how easily she seems to follow my thoughts. But maybe Amanda has some touch of telepathy or empathy herself? It would explain her evident attachment to this stark planet. Or maybe what talent she has was developed by constant exposure to telepaths, or her bond with Sarek.

Amanda links arms with me and winks. "You must know therapeutic protocols well. How to program them in? Not my forte, my dear. But I'm wondering if you could help me add something to Spock's tutorial?"

"Hmm. Vulcan computers though, an interesting challenge. But we might manage between the two of us. What did you have in mind?"

"The most important question of all that I'm sure is not in the curriculum. I want the computer to ask my son: 'How do you feel?'"

* * *

Scotty calls to us as he steps out of the Klingon ship. "Doctor McCoy said I should tell ye--I'm quoting him, mind, so I beg the admiral's pardon, that he's 'too blasted old to go traipsing up and down those stairs in hell's own heat,' that 'if Lazarus wants to visit, he should come down to him.'"

Jim quirks an eyebrow at me as I let the others all flow in front of me until I'm at the back of our group with Ny. I grin back at him. "I can't catch up with the gossip if I walk with you, Jim, now can I?"

He laughs and turns, leading us up the steps. I feel a strange sense of dislocation in this position. Part of Jim's inner circle now with Len and Spock, yet still part of this outer one, and I wonder if eventually I'll have to choose to lock into one orbit.

"He gave you permission to use his first name?" Ny whispers.

"Permission?" I grin. "What's that?"

Truth is I slipped up one day when Jim dropped in at Ops and not only didn't he call me on it, but his whole face lit up. And I melted at the expression. But I feel strangely reluctant to say more to Ny, as if I'd be telling tales. She looks scandalized at my answer as it is. Finally it hits me that it would never occur to Ny or the others to call "the captain" Jim. Not without express permission. I can't even remember Ny or Hikaru or Pavel ever teasing Jim. I can't imagine any of them confiding anything personal to Jim or he to them. How wearying it must be. Twenty years, more or less, we've known each other, and I think of them as family. But the captain is the patriarch, one apart. And you're never on a first-person basis with your father. He's there to take care of you, maybe challenge and discipline you, but not to have troubles of his own.

Or maybe father isn't quite the way they think of Jim? Janice once told me she thought Jim's crew, or at least his bridge crew, were all a bit in love with him. I scoffed, thinking her own feelings were coloring her perceptions. After all, I wasn't in love with Jim Kirk. But looking at all of them as we walk up that winding stair cut into the mountain, I think that maybe she isn't far from wrong.

Ny frowns up at me. "I worry about the admiral sometimes. Do you think he's all right? As his friend?"

"I'm not sure I'd call him that. I know he wouldn't."

Ny looks at me strangely and worries her lower lip. She falls silent, seems relieved when Scotty pulls her away to discuss the repairs on their Klingon ship. Scotty is almost shuffling, and I can hear his labored breathing several paces away. I think these steps are a bit much for him, and Ny takes his arm, tactfully lending her strength while seemingly just sharing closeness. Even while speaking with Scotty, Ny's eyes constantly dart Jim's way. Pavel skips around and behind Kirk like a puppy, his head tilting at his master's voice. Only Sulu seems to lack the tail-wagging quality. The alpha dog in this pack. Or is it beta when you have a top dog over you? But then I see Hikaru rub his chin in a familiar gesture, use a certain tone to settle down Pavel, that seems a conscious imitation of Jim.

Scotty, on the other hand, has always seemed to me one apart even in company, the gamma, focused only on machines and the occasional flesh and blood doll to play with. But he, too, followed Jim without question, knowing he'd probably never be allowed near his beloved engines again. And even he could beam sometimes at his captain like Jim had invented the warp drive.

I don't think they're in love with Jim, exactly, more like a crush. I should know. Crushes may hurt, but are undemanding. Love takes guts. Takes braving defenses to get to know a person. Even scarier, letting the shields down to let them get to know you.

Or maybe Jim is like a vid star with his entourage? I should know about that, too, from my time with Roger Korby. In the end, I wasn't Roger's lover; I was his devoted fan. Just like his assistant Brownie. The difference is that I think Roger liked it. Why else pick Andrea as his mechanical geisha? I don't think there was really a Roger apart from the great Doctor Roger Korby. I think he was afraid of being just Roger, that it could never be enough.

I do think there's a Jim aside from Kirk the legend, and I don't think Jim revels in the fame. Uses it to tie others to him? Oh, yes. And it makes me wonder just how he's tethering me.

* * *

Jim and I have lingered here alone together at the mountain top, watching night fall. We sit at a bench overlooking the desert. The Klingon ship from here looks like a toy I could rest on my palm.

I take his hand. "Why aren't they your friends? Sulu, Uhura, Chekov, Scotty. After all these years? They're good people, Jim."

"Because friends see the ragged edges--or else it's all a pretense. A commander doesn't have the right to be vulnerable. If you're anything less than perfect, they lose faith, and you lose command. That's something Spock said to me a long time ago and it still holds true."

"What's the point now? After all that's happened."

"I still have to hold them together. To get them home. It's not over. Now's not the time--"

"To treat them like friends?"

"To give up hope."

"And us? What are we, Jim?"

He traces along my jaw line and under my chin with a finger, making me shiver. "I told you. We're not friends."

Sighing, he puts his arm around me, and we sit for a long time in silence, listening to each other's breathing and gazing down at the moonlit desert. Or would that be planetlit given T'Kuht's status as a sister planet, I wonder?

After a while we turn to each other. I'm the first to slide my hands under clothing. He gasps as my fingernails graze along his ribs. I love that I can make him respond so easily. He nuzzles at an earlobe and kisses down from there to my throat with a teasing lightness, and now it's my turn to gasp.

"Hmmm...stop," I say. Not convincingly.

I can feel the vibration of a laugh tickling my throat as he starts pulling my tunic from my trousers. I haven't managed to stop my own hands from roaming.

"I'll stop if you will," he whispers into my ear.

I giggle. I can't seem to help it, but it doesn't break the spell, it just seems an overflow of joy, of life. "It's cold here. If you don't stop we're going to wind up--" He's reached a particularly sensitive spot, and for a while, I'm not capable of speech. "On that rock floor. That hard, pebble-strewn ground. That no doubt has the native version of scorpions." And then I find a sensitive spot, and he draws in a sharp breath.

"Chris, you're not helping." But he presses his lips against the nape of my neck and then quickly draws us both up. He sighs. "It's such a long way to the ship. And if you say anything along the lines of 'good things come to those who wait' I may have to toss you off the ledge."

We try to be quiet entering the ship but there's no being sneaky given a Vulcan on watch--Saavik. I feel myself turning red and drop Kirk's hand, but he simply winds his hand around my waist and draws me closer, giving Saavik a casual goodnight. I feel her gaze at my back all the way down the corridor. And she's the easiest.

Kirk seems to read my mind. "I don't intend to sneak around on my own ship. And hiding this will only make it harder for them to get used to us."

I'm surprised he thinks of this ship that way, as his. As much as I am surprised by his implication we're a couple, not a one night coupling.

It was a long climb down. But the wait has a different effect on me than him. The closer we get to his quarters, the more nervous I feel. As soon as we're through his door, he presses me to the bulkhead and is kissing me fiercely. I feel his arousal and I freeze. My arms come up around his back, but I can't stop my shaking--and he can feel it. He pulls back and strokes my hair. "We can take it slow."

"Faster might be better."

"As if you're pulling a splinter? Or rushing so as to not lose your nerve?" He shakes his head.

"I'm not as practiced as you." I turn my head away. "I'm not as good as you." It's not a lie, but not why I'm so jittery. I wish I could be sure this will just be sex. That it is only my body he touches.

He brushes his thumb against my lips, making me shiver, but it's a good kind of shiver, and as I turn back to see his smile, I can tell he knows that. "This is not gymnastics, no one will take points off for the dismount. This is just for you and me."

And then he's kissing me again. His lips touch down lightly at first, his hands stroking only my face and the back of my neck, his body carefully not touching mine. I relax with a sigh and press myself against him, grip my fingers in his hair to pull him even closer, and he deepens the kiss. It's just sex. He's done it with how many women? And I'm no virgin. This doesn't have to be such a big deal. I'm sure that's what he'd tell me. Don't make more of this than it is.

He's good. All the rumors, the dirty jokes are true. I expected them to be. And for a while I can lose myself in that. He's making synapses fire so quickly I feel I'm going to short out from the sensations. That's good. So good. It's so much better to feel *this* than alone in my own skin. But then he's slowing it down, lowering the intensity as he caresses and speaks to me softly. He's not stupid. It seems he's not going to let me lose who I am or who I'm doing it with. It's only when I call out his name that he brings me back up and over. His arms tighten around me when I start to roll away.

He takes my face in his hands. "I don't let a lot of people in, Chris. I'm not going to pretend it didn't hurt when you shut me out." He has to know he's just laid himself wide open to be hurt again. I want to bury my face in his neck, but he won't let me move. He's searching my face, no doubt waiting for some caustic quip.

I feel shame and determine to stop being such a coward. "What are you going to do if you can't stay in Starfleet?"

"You mean if they kick me out? No one's dared to ask. Not even Bones." He bends down and kisses me softly on the lips before releasing me. "I think that's why I love you."

I wrench myself away from him and scramble out of the bed.

His bitter laugh stops me. "Not the reaction I was hoping for."

So much for not being a coward. But I make myself turn back. I feel my hands clenching. I want to cry against his shoulder. I want to pound my fists against his chest. Instead, I unclench my fists and hold my ground. I leave my clothes on the deck. It seems fair. Given I how naked that "I love you" must have made him feel.

"I spent five years with a man I knew was unfaithful, pretending I believed his excuses. A man who could never say I love you without it being a way of manipulating me. Five more years searching for him because I couldn't admit those first five years were a waste. Then I spent even more years on a true will-of-a-wisp. On a man who never could say 'I love you.' At least not to me. A crush. Everyone laughs at a crush. They shouldn't. It's aptly named. And the longer you spend that way, the more you feel it'll be all the more ridiculous if you admit it was never real, that you wasted years on nothing, less than nothing. All that pain and fire for a handful of ashes. Why should I want to start that up again?"

"Because I said I love you, and I mean it." His voice is tight, almost testy. I wonder if it irks him to be contradicted. Yes, I'm being unfair. It's one of the few defenses I have left.

"Words" I whisper, but I want to believe. It scares me how much I want to believe.

"Can be just a line. But give me some credit. I said it after I had you in my bed. Not before. I've never used 'I love you' as a tool of seduction, and I've said it to precious few. Maybe if I had said it more easily, I wouldn't have wound up alone."

I sit down heavily on the bed. I'm strangely dry eyed, but my heart feels like it's beating at triple time. I know I can't afford to run again, because this time he might let me go. He's not a masochist, after all. That's more in my line.

I love you. I love you. I love you. I know if I start I won't be able to stop saying it. It's like a crying jag, or hiccups, or hysterical laughter. So I stop it by pressing my lips to his. Because I'm not ready to drop those three words between us. It feels too much like losing. God, when did I become like that? So battered that even when I finally get The Words, I can't imagine when I'll say them back? Maybe Vulcan would have suited me more than I thought.

"Stay with me tonight?" he asks.

I stay.

* * *

My leave is brief. Jim doesn't dare take me to the spaceport. He'd be recognized, and there's no sense pushing it. So we have to say our goodbyes here.

He's standing by the Klingon ship. He's staring upwards squinting at the sun, and following his gaze, I see a white-clad figure high up on the ledge above us. Spock. I don't know how I know, but I do. I look at Jim's face and find it no longer bothers me how much he loves Spock, or how Spock has loved him, only that this distance between them hurts him. I feel a lurch in my stomach at the sight of that pain.

I briefly brush his cheek with my hand. "How do you feel?" It's not a question Ny or Hikaru or Pavel could ask. It's not one Spock would ask directly. And Len can't ask it without making you wonder if he's setting a trap. It's not Kirk or the Captain or the Admiral who answers me: it's Jim.

He takes my hand. "Old. Young. Tired. Exhilarated. Mending. Wondering if loving you will be the death of me."

I press down hard on that insecure nurse and closed-down doctor who want to answer for me, so it's Chris who answers. "Strange. I think loving you could be the life of me."