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Chapter Text

The creature had tracked the boy across half a mile of wind-scoured plain, driven by scent and hunger.

From his secluded alcove, Spock watched the final sprint of the chase through the swirling snow—a blur of gold and blue, and behind him, the slavering bulk of the beast, loping with the precision of a predator certain of its kill.

Spock did not hesitate.

He clutched the torch.

The fire roared to life, a golden brand against the cold. The beast reared back, hissing, nostrils flaring with the stench of smoke. One step forward was enough. It turned, disappearing into the white.

The boy collapsed.

Spock approached, eyes narrowing against the wind, and for a moment—just a moment—he could not move.

Starfleet uniform.

Disheveled blond hair.

Long, golden lashes caked with frost. Eyes, wide and wild.

The face—

Spock’s breath caught in his chest.

James Tiberius Kirk.

He said the name before he could think better of it. A memory given voice, an old instinct breaking through the years and the impossible veil of time.

“James T. Kirk. How did you find me?”

The boy blinked up at him in confusion.

“Excuse me?”

Not confusion like one who had been away for a while.

Confusion like one who had never heard the name Spock in his life.

Spock took a half step back. His mind worked furiously, parsing the visual data—yes, the jawline, the tilt of the brow, the unmistakable fire behind the eyes—but…

No. Not those eyes.

Not hazel.

Blue.

The smallest detail. A trick of genetics. But everything pivoted on it.

His hope—that irrational, fluttering thing that had surfaced without permission—folded back in on itself. This was not his Jim. Not the boy who hid in the hills of Tarsus, not the man who challenged him across a hundred missions and a thousand quiet conversations. Not the friend who once laid a hand on his shoulder in silence and said everything he ever needed to.

Spock smoothed his face into the mask of control he had worn since Vulcan died.

Fascinating, he thought, with the detachment of a man trying not to feel too much.

The boy in front of him stared up with suspicion, eyes sharp as ice, the wind tugging at his clothes. He looked as though the universe had been unfair to him since the day he was born.

Spock had the sudden, terrible thought: perhaps it has.

He settled on “I am Spock.”

The boy blinked, and those strange eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Bullshit.”

********** 

This was turning out to be one of the worst days of Jim Kirk’s life.

And that was saying something.

A night of anxiety filled insomnia had lead to that disaster of a hearing…then the distress call…the damn hypospray (thanks Bones)…rushing to the bridge to warn Captain Pike and then…

oh god, Vulcan.

How many billions of people…just…gone?

He shook his head, his mind refusing to comprehend anything further.

He sat hunched near the flickering fire, wrapped in thermal gear still damp from the snow. His ribs ached from where the beast had slammed him into the ice. His hands were trembling from cold, adrenaline, or the fact that a Vulcan who looked suspiciously like an older version of the one who’d just tossed him onto this icebox of a planet was calmly feeding the fire with a piece of broken tech.

Not just any Vulcan.

Spock.

What the hell.

Jim kept staring, jaw tight, waiting for the catch. The con. The part where someone shouted “Gotcha!” and cameras popped out from the snow.

But instead, the old Vulcan looked at him with something like… fondness.

Like he knew him.

Really knew him.

Then he said it. Voice warm, measured, almost soft:

“It is remarkably pleasing to see you again, old friend.”

Jim blinked.
What.
The.
Fuck.

“Okay,” he said, dragging the word out like it might help him find his footing, “what the hell is going on here?”

The Vulcan didn’t seem offended. If anything, his expression grew gentler—like he’d expected this reaction.

Jim was not feeling gentle.

“I mean, let’s run this back,” Jim said, voice climbing. “I get marooned on an ice cube by a Vulcan who hates my guts. Then I nearly get eaten by a giant snow cockroach—thanks for that, by the way—only to get rescued by Gandalf the Pointy-Eared. And now you’re telling me… what? That you know me?”

The Vulcan tilted his head slightly. “Yes.”

“And that you’re Spock?”

“Indeed.”

Jim stared. “There are two of you?”

The Vulcan lifted a brow. “More accurately, we are the same individual. From different points in the timeline.”

Jim let out a bark of laughter, harsh and incredulous. “Of course you are. Time travel. Why the hell not.”

He ran both hands through his damp hair and tried not to lose it completely.

But then—

He looked up.

And the way this older Spock was looking at him…

Like Jim meant something.

Like he had meant something for a long, long time.

It did something sharp and uninvited to Jim’s chest.

“…Why do you look at me like that?” he asked quietly.

The silence in the cave deepened, broken only by the occasional crack of the fire. Outside, the storm still howled, but inside, it felt like the eye of something vast—too quiet for comfort.

Jim shifted, every bruise flaring in protest. The old Vulcan still hadn’t stopped looking at him.

Like he mattered.

Like he was known. Seen.

It made him uneasy. Angry, almost. Hopeful, and that was worse.

The Vulcan watched him with that same expression—half sorrow, half awe. Like Jim was a ghost of something long lost.

“I have been,” he said, “and always shall be… your friend.”

The words landed in the space between them like a stone in a still pond.

Jim blinked. “What?”

“I have been and always shall be your friend.”

Jim frowned, blinking again, like maybe he’d missed something.

“No offense, but…” He gestured vaguely at the cave walls, the fire, the freezing air. “We’re not friends. You hate me. You threw me off the ship, remember?”

Spock’s gaze flickered. “You are not the captain?”

Jim snorted. “No. You’re the captain. Or, you were. Pike was taken hostage.”

A stillness came over the old Vulcan then. He straightened. A shadow crossed his face, a realization anchoring into place.

“By Nero,” he said.

Jim’s stomach turned. “Yeah. Wait—how do you know that name?”

Spock took a measured breath, then gave a short nod, as though confirming something to himself.

“There is… much you need to know,” he said.

“Well, no shit.”

Spock tilted his head. “For brevity’s sake,” he said gently, “I would ask to share with you my mind. The meld will make it clear.”

Jim stared. “You want to do what now?”

“It is safe,” Spock assured. “And it will explain what words cannot.”

Jim hesitated. Every instinct in him said don’t trust anyone, least of all someone claiming to be the older version of the man who had tried to ruin his career before it began. But something about this one—this version—was different.

Calmer.

Warmer. Sadder.

And then there was the way he’d said friend.

The word burned behind Jim’s ribs.

“…Alright,” Jim said, slowly. “Let’s do the mind thing.”

Spock leaned forward, and with great care, pressed his fingers to Jim’s face.

“My mind to your mind,” he said softly.

“My thoughts to your thoughts.”

The cave vanished.

And Jim fell—
—into fire, into stars, into a story not his own.

The stars reeled past him in a blur.

A thousand voices whispered through his thoughts—alien, familiar, tender, angry. And through it all: Spock. Calm, steady, ancient. The weight of time itself pressing gently on the edges of Jim’s consciousness.

The Narada.
Jim caught glimpses—flashes—of chaos. The supernova. Spock’s desperate attempt to save Romulus. The black, serrated hull of the Romulan ship bursting through time like a spear. The timeline fracturing, shattering. Spock, captured, taunted, and finally helpless, marooned. A sense of deep despair, stronger than anything he’d ever known. Watching Vulcan imploding in on itself like a dying sun.

But those were only the edges of the meld.

The heart of it… was himself.

No—someone else. A different Jim Kirk.

Tall, steady, a quiet confidence earned through blood and breath and bone. That Jim smiled differently. Moved differently. There was a certainty to him—a peace that came from knowing who he was, where he stood, what he meant.

Jim followed in his wake like a shadow.

He saw it all through Spock’s eyes:

The bridge of the Enterprise.

Kirk, older, issuing orders with crisp clarity.

Spock at his side—sometimes the first to challenge him, sometimes the last to leave his side. Always there. Always steady.

Friendship forged in fire and logic and something deeper.

A thousand missions.

Planets made of crystal and light. Battles that shook the stars. The Genesis planet. Death. Life.

The grief of a Vulcan holding a captain’s broken body in his arms.
The joy—impossible, infinite—of hearing that same captain breathe again.

Jim gasped.

He couldn’t hold onto all of it. It was too much—too much life. Too much loss. Utterly devoid of any order or organization.

But then—

Something darker pushed in.

Not Spock’s memory.

His.

A face emerging from smoke.

Not the sharp command of a captain.

Not the kindness of a friend.

A voice.

Low, cultured. Too calm.

“You’re special, James.”

Jim’s throat closed.

He knew that voice. Even in the dreamscape.

Even now.

“You were meant for better things.”

His stomach twisted. The meld began to shudder.

Kodos.

He saw him again—like he always did when he let his guard down.

But this time, there was another image layered over it. A memory from Spock’s mind—older, worn with time:

Anton Karridian.

Jim knew that face. Knew it before Spock even put the name to it.

His scream ripped through the meld. He shoved Spock away—

—gasped—

—and snapped back into his body like it had just been dropped from orbit.

The cave spun.

He was breathing hard. He couldn’t stop.

Spock was across from him, shaken, eyes wide. He reached forward—but did not touch.

“…Jim?”

Jim scrambled back.

“You saw him,” he said hoarsely. “You knew who he was.”

Spock’s face fell into quiet horror.

And for a moment, the fire seemed to shrink, casting long shadows on the cave wall, dancing around two men separated by universes—and by a name that refused to stay buried.

Kodos.

The monster didn’t die in the other timeline, he had faked his death and lived on.

So many things were different between the two worlds but Kirk knew, somehow, that he was not lucky enough for this to be one of them.

***************

The moment James tore away from the meld, Spock knew.

Not the whole of it. Not yet. But he knew pain when it scorched through another’s mind. He knew the shape of shame, the clenching horror of memory buried so deep it poisoned the root of identity.

And he knew Kodos.

No—Karidian.

Anton Karidian’s face had barely surfaced in the meld before the younger Kirk recoiled, as if struck. That alone might have been coincidence.

But nothing about James T. Kirk was coincidence.

Spock’s fingers hovered in the air where the meld had broken. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his hand.

James stood a few feet away, bent over, hands on his knees, breath clouding in the frigid air. He did not speak. Spock did not press.

Instead, he thought.

The divergence point. The butterfly’s wings.

He had deduced that much of this timeline had fractured upon the destruction of the Kelvin. Nero’s monologing certainly implied thus. The damage to what Spock had known as history had been severe.

The meld had filled in the blanks. James’s father dead, his birth early, his path to Starfleet a chaotic spiral of rebellion and fire. But Tarsus IV…

That atrocity had occurred regardless. The colony fell under the grip of famine, and Governor Kodos enacted a genocidal “solution,” killing over four thousand in the name of survival.

In his timeline, James had been thirteen. He had witnessed the aftermath. Escaped the culling. He had hidden, led other children into the wilderness. Suffered, yes—but he had emerged a survivor in the most defiant sense. He had not emerged broken.

But this James…

Spock turned to look at him again, really see him. The bruises blooming across his jaw. The fury that was one breath away from collapse. The way he had laughed like it cost him nothing, and meant everything. The huddled form trapped in utter panic by the mere thought of Kodos.

And his eyes.

Blue.

Not hazel.

Of course.

Kodos had practiced eugenics—selective mercy masquerading as logic. He had chosen who lived and who died based on a grotesque standard of genetic “purity.”

Blond hair. Blue eyes.

The boy with blue eyes would not have been sent to the slaughter.

No.

He had been kept.

Spock’s stomach twisted, an unfamiliar sickness clawing at the edges of control. He felt the conclusion solidify in his mind with mathematical clarity.

This James T. Kirk had not endured Kodos’s regime in the same way. He had not starved.

Glimpses of the young man’s memory echoed in Spock’s mind.

This boy had been pampered. Praised.

Violated.

And worst of all… the shame…he believed there was nothing heroic in surviving that way.

Spock looked away, struggling with the weight of what he now knew.

Oh, Jim…

Chapter Text

The wind howled outside the cave mouth but inside, somehow, Jim couldn’t seem to get enough AIR.

He was still bent over, hands on his knees, heart racing in his chest like a trapped animal. His lungs couldn’t seem to catch. His vision blurred around the edges, the flickering firelight turning the cave walls into something twisted and swaying.

Kodos.

Kodos.

The name scraped across the inside of his skull.

His skin was ice and fire all at once, and somewhere behind his ribs, his heart was trying to punch its way out.

Kodos.

Fucking Kodos.

That’s the name that lived in his nightmares.

That’s the name they all whispered about when the news broke—when the Federation condemned it, when the bodies were burned, when the reports came out from the relief ships.

Kodos the Executioner. Dead. Gone. A monster killed in the chaos of his own regime’s collapse.

Jim had held on to that like a lifeline.

Like oxygen.

Like certainty.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

But Karidian?

He had seen the face in Spock’s mind like a brand. Older. Softer. Hiding. Alive.

“No,” Jim whispered, staggering upright, his whole body shaking. “No, no, that’s not—he died—he died—”

His voice cracked apart in the cold.

A stone slid beneath his boot. He caught himself on the cave wall, trying to ground himself, trying to focus, but his fingers were numb and clumsy, his breath hiccuping into gasps.

It was supposed to be over.

Kodos was a ghost. A monster left behind on Tarsus. A thing that happened and ended and would never happen again.

If he were alive—if he were out there, free, safe—

Jim’s stomach turned. He pressed a hand to his mouth and slid to the ground, his back pressed against the icy wall.

“Jim.”

He didn’t even hear Spock move. But the voice was there, close, quiet.

Jim didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

His entire past had just cracked open, and something rotting and unfinished had crawled out.

The man who ruined him might still be alive.

He clenched his hands into fists, hard enough that his nails broke skin. His whole body shuddered.

“I didn’t know,” he rasped. “I didn’t—I thought—”

Spock knelt beside him. He didn’t touch him.

Just was there.

“Kodos adopted the alias Anton Karidian after the fall of Tarsus IV,” Spock said quietly, gently. “He eluded justice for many years.”

Jim’s breath hitched again. “But… you caught him?”

“In my timeline, yes,” Spock said. “James—my James—exposed him. He uncovered the truth.”

Jim’s chest twisted. He shook his head. “I didn’t. I didn’t know. I never knew. I thought he died.”

“You could not have known,” Spock said.

“I should have!” Jim snapped, voice breaking. “I should’ve known! I should’ve looked—I should’ve done something!”

“My Jim didn’t,” Spock stated simply.

Jim gaped at him, muscles silently screaming as he held them in panicked tension.

“You were a child,” Spock continued, firmly now. “A child who survived something horrific. You are not at fault.”

Jim didn’t answer. Just curled into himself a little more, breath rasping, eyes wide and far away.

He wasn’t ready to believe that.

Not yet.

But Spock didn’t leave. And the wind outside howled on.

Jim swallowed roughly. Anger sparked within him.

No.

He would not break.

Not like this.

He refused to let that fucking asshole take any more from him.

Jim scrubbed at his face with the sleeve of his coat. The tears had frozen halfway down his cheeks. His hands were trembling, but that was probably just the cold.

He forced himself to sit up straighter.

What the hell was he doing?

Billions of people—billions—were gone. Wiped out in a blink. An entire world shattered, a culture that stretched back thousands of years reduced to dust and echo. He’d seen it in the meld. Felt it. The screaming silence left behind.

And Earth was next.

Spock was here because of that. Because a madman believed that genocide would make up for his pain. Because Nero was headed straight for Earth, armed with future-tech and rage, and no one in Starfleet had a damn clue what was coming.

And Jim was falling apart in a cave, over a man who might already be dead.

He gritted his teeth.

Kodos didn’t matter. Not now. Not compared to this. Not when the entire planet was at stake.

Pull yourself together, Kirk.

He swallowed hard, trying to shove the storm back into its box. There was no room for it now. He didn’t have time to break. The crew needed a captain. Earth needed a plan. And he needed to be the man he had seen in Spock’s memories.

Spock needed…

He glanced sideways. The older Vulcan hadn’t moved, hadn’t spoken again. Just waited.

Jim straightened a little more. Nodded once to himself.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Okay. I’m good.”

Spock’s brow rose slightly. “You do not appear to be ‘good,’” he said. But there was no judgment in it. Just observation. A quiet respect, maybe, for the effort.

Jim exhaled and looked out toward the mouth of the cave. The storm was a white wall now. No way they could travel in that.

“We’ll wait it out,” he said hoarsely. “Then we head to the outpost. We’ve got to get back to the Enterprise.”

Spock inclined his head. “Agreed.”

Jim reached for his rations kit, trying to make his hands steady. “If Earth goes down next…” He didn’t finish the thought.

“You disabled Nero’s drill,” Spock said calmly. “It will take time to regenerate. You have bought the planet at least twenty-five hours.”

Jim blinked. “Wait. Regenerate? Like… the machine repairs itself?”

Spock allowed himself a very faint smile. “A great deal can change in a century and a half.”
Jim let out a soft, shaky huff of air. Almost a laugh. Almost.

“…Guess I’d better catch up.”

**************

Spock had said little as James had unraveled beside the fire.

He had seen minds fracture before—under duress, under pain, under grief—but after the initial pulse of fear, this was different. This was not the moment of breaking.

It was the moment of rebuilding.

The boy—no, the man, despite his youth—gathered his fraying thoughts like a soldier binding a wound. His breath shuddered, his shoulders shook once… and then steadied. Bit by bit, piece by piece, he pulled himself upright again. Not because it was easy. Not because it didn’t hurt.

But because someone had to. Because others were depending on him.

Spock watched, silent, struck by the truth of it. The sheer defiance of it.

He had known another James T. Kirk once—brilliant, reckless, fiercely loyal. But he had also known that man later, when the sharpness had been tempered by years of command, when pain had already shaped him. That Kirk had grown into greatness with time.

This one… this one was forging himself in fire now.

Spock felt something twist in his chest. Pride, certainly. Grief, yes. But awe, too.

To live through so much, so young—Tarsus, abuse, the burden of his father’s death, the weight of the shadow he didn’t know he cast—and still, still, to look outward. To think first not of his own torment, but of the billions who might suffer if he faltered.

Spock’s gaze lingered on the curve of the young man’s jaw, the bruises that bloomed like shadows in perfect mockery of the stubble he had yet to grow, the set of his mouth as he faced the storm again.

No matter the timeline. No matter the odds.

James Tiberius Kirk is… remarkable.

He felt a twinge of sadness for his long lost friend.

Once again, across time, Spock felt the quiet, anchoring truth of it:

“I have been—and always shall be—your friend.”

Even if this Kirk did not yet understand it.
Even if the universe itself seemed bent on breaking him.
He endured.

And Spock would endure with him. As he always had.

*****************

They sat in stillness for some minutes, the only sound the screams of the wind outside.

Kirk didn’t speak. He focused on breathing.

In.

Out.

His pulse slowed and a wave of fatigue threatened to overwhelm him.

With a determined yank, he pushed away from the wall and made his way to the supplies.

Jim sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, the survival kit open beside him in the snow. His fingers worked through the contents
automatically—rations, flares, thermal blanket—muscle memory doing the work because his mind sure as hell wasn’t.

His hands trembled as he unpacked the meagre supplies he had grabbed from the pod—too fast, too rough. A protein bar slipped from his fingers and landed in the snow with a soft thump. He stared at it for a long moment before picking it up, brushing the ice from the foil with something like reverence.

He should be thinking. There were questions that needed asking. A plan that needed making. Nero was out there, and Earth was next. Spock—older Spock—had said they needed to get to the Enterprise. And Jim agreed. Of course he agreed.

So why couldn’t he move?

His brain had run off somewhere in the middle of the meld, and it hadn’t come back.

Kodos. Karidian.

It was like a pressure in his chest that wouldn’t release, squeezing tighter with every breath.

Until just a few hours ago, he’d thought Kodos died on Tarsus—had to have died. A riot, or an explosion, or maybe someone who’d lost everything had gotten lucky. The end. Closed loop.

But now? Now Spock had said the name like it meant something. Like it was recent. Like the man who had broken him might have slipped free into another life, another name, another chance.

And the universe just let it happen.

He clenched his jaw and set down the ration bar he hadn’t even realized he was still holding. His hands shook. Not from the cold—at least not just the cold. He pulled the emergency blanket out of the kit, more for something to do than any real hope it’d help.

His head felt too heavy. His thoughts were underwater, slow and echoing. Adrenaline crash. He knew the signs. He’d had them before—after fights, after raids, after waking up screaming on nights that wouldn’t end.

He wasn’t crying anymore, but his face felt hollowed out, as if something inside had cracked and leaked away.

**************

Spock watched in silence. Intervening would not help—not yet. Not until James had found the bottom of the panic, the edge of the spiral.

The boy—no, the captain—set the rations down carefully by the fire, his movements slow now, exhausted. He curled his hands together, trying to will the shaking away.

Spock took a step closer, voice low and calm.

“You are not obligated to stay awake for my sake, Jim.”

Kirk didn’t respond.

Spock tried again. “Sleep would be… logical.”

A faint, bitter laugh. “Yeah. Logic.”

He didn’t lie down right away. Just sat, shoulders hunched, staring into the fire. Eventually, his breathing began to even out. His eyes, blue and glassy, began to flicker shut.

Spock settled across from him, posture impeccable, gaze steady.

He would not sleep. Not tonight.

Let James rest.

He would keep watch.

****************

Jim huddled in on himself. The warmth of the fire barely touched him.

“Sleep would be… logical,” Spock had said.

Yeah, well, good luck with that, he thought bitterly.

He pulled the blanket tight around his shoulders and leaned back against the rock wall. The fire crackled beside him. He tried to focus on that, on the sound, on the heat that tried and failed to melt the edges of his chill.

Spock sat across from him like a sentinel. Quiet. Steady. Unfazed by the cold, by the wind, by the mess of the human across from him.

Jim wished he could be like that. Controlled.

Whole.

Instead, he closed his eyes and prayed that his brain would start working again tomorrow.

Just as the weight of the adrenaline crash began to drag him under, Jim’s eyes fluttered open one last time.

The fire popped. The wind howled beyond the cave mouth. Spock sat in stillness, hands folded, watching the flames with a quiet intensity that made Jim feel like maybe—just maybe—things might not fall apart after all.

His thoughts were syrupy and slow, slipping sideways in his skull, but one rose stubborn through the fog:

Where Spock came from…

That other world. That other him.

His lips moved before he could stop them, voice rough with exhaustion, barely more than a breath.

“…Did I know my father?”

Spock looked up immediately. The firelight caught the edge of his profile, softened his normally sharp expression into something… mournful. Gentle.

“Yes,” the older Vulcan said softly. “Very well.”

Jim didn’t respond. He didn’t nod. Didn’t move.
Just exhaled once—long and slow—and let sleep take him.

Chapter Text

Spock had not moved for hours. He had meditated briefly, then settled into quiet observation. James slept fitfully at first—tossing in the blankets, brows furrowed, murmuring things half-formed. But eventually, exhaustion won, and his breath evened.

Now, in the dim violet-gray of pre-dawn, James stirred again.

His breathing changed. His fingers twitched.

Spock watched as those blue eyes blinked open, unfocused for a moment, then narrowing as memory returned. There was a moment—just one—where fear flashed through them. Then it passed, buried behind the practiced steel of a survivor.

Spock inclined his head, voice gentle but precise.

“You have been unconscious for six point seven eight hours.” He paused, letting the boy adjust. “The storm has blown itself out. It will be light soon. Once visibility improves, we can begin the trek to the outpost.”

James sat up slowly, shoulders hunched beneath the emergency blanket. He looked around the small cave, taking stock of their supplies, of Spock, of himself.

“Right,” he rasped. His voice was hoarse. He cleared it, rubbing a hand down his face. “We should—yeah. Let’s get moving soon.”

Spock did not rush him. Instead, he rose fluidly, crossed to the cave mouth, and peered out into the whitening snow.

“It is fortunate we found each other,” he said quietly. “Another twelve hours of exposure would have required medical intervention.”

He did not say for you. He did not need to.

Behind him, James pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and looked toward the pale light beyond the rocks.

“Then we’re lucky,” he murmured.

Spock turned slightly, just enough to see the side of the boy’s face. His hair was mussed, his jaw still bruised.

Lucky, James had said.

Spock’s chest tightened—not with grief, nor with guilt, but with something older and deeper.

Wonder, perhaps. Or awe. Or the ache of a man who has seen the universe unravel and yet still finds himself drawn—again and again—toward this impossible, indomitable soul.

“Luck,” Spock echoed softly. “An imprecise term. But... perhaps not inaccurate.” Echos of a conversation from long ago rang in his mind.

‘You almost make me believe in luck…’

The Jim in front of him huffed. “We may need more than luck, how do you feel about miracles, Mr. Spock?”

His heart twisted uncomfortably in his side. “I remain…open to the idea,” Spock managed.

They moved in near silence, the rhythm of practical necessity guiding them. Jim folded the emergency blanket with mechanical precision, tucked rations back into the survival kit, secured the casing. His movements were a little steadier now, though still sluggish from the crash of adrenaline and cold.

They set out into the blinding white. Not much was said for over an hour, save some small words about adjusting their heading. Initially it was too cold to truly communicate, but as the day warmed, so apparently, did Jim Kirk.

“How did he cope?” he asked. “Your Jim. How did he live with what that man did?”

He didn’t say the name. Couldn’t. It lodged in his throat like a shard of glass.

Spock turned slightly, giving Jim the full weight of his attention. His expression was gentle, but grave.

“It was not the same for him,” Spock said. “The circumstances diverged.”

Jim looked up at that, something tight and bright in his eyes. “How?”

Spock hesitated only a moment. Then: “He was placed on the execution list.”

Jim flinched, but didn’t look away.

“He escaped,” Spock continued softly. “Led others—children—into the wild. He kept them alive until Starfleet arrived. He saw horrors. But he was not… favored.”

An all too familiar flush of shame ran through Jim’s body.

Jim swallowed hard. “So he wasn’t—”

The word didn’t come. Couldn’t.

But Spock understood. His voice remained calm, deliberate.

“No,” he said. “Kodos did not… keep him.”

Jim looked away. His jaw clenched. His shoulders hunched, as if some awful weight had returned to sit on them again.

“Of course he didn’t,” Jim muttered. “Of course he got to be the goddamn hero.” He turned as if to storm off.

Spock reached out then—just a slight movement of the hand between them, not quite a touch.

“Survival is not a contest, Jim,” he said quietly. “Nor is it shameful to have endured.”

Jim didn’t answer. Not yet. His throat worked around something too old, too tangled to name. But he didn’t pull away, either. He just stared into the cold light of morning, and breathed.

Spock did not flinch at the bitterness in Jim’s voice. He had heard it before—on other faces, in other timelines. Pain wrapped in sarcasm. Shame hidden in fury.

“Well that explains it,” Jim muttered, his mouth twisting. “That’s why I’m broken. And he wasn’t.”

The silence between them crackled like the air before a storm.

Spock’s response was calm, deliberate. “No, Jim. That is not what I said.”

Jim looked at him sharply, eyes gleaming with unshed heat.

Spock continued, voice low but firm. “You are not broken. You were wounded. There is a difference.”

Jim scoffed, a bitter little huff of sound. “Sure as hell feels the same.”

Spock inclined his head slightly. “The wound is not your failure. It is the evidence of your survival.”

Jim turned away, eyes fixed on the snowdrifts piled in the distance. He didn’t answer. But his hands, clenched tight around the pack’s straps, began to loosen. Just a little.

Spock let the silence settle, let it sit between them like a hand on the shoulder—not forcing, just present.

They walked on.

“My Jim had the luxury of believing in clear lines between good and evil,” Spock said finally. “He did not suffer the confusion of being chosen by the monster.”

Jim's breath caught, sharp.

“That does not make you weak, Jim. It makes you human.”

Jim was silent for a long moment. Then, hoarsely:

“…I hate that I lived.”

Spock’s answer was simple.

“I am grateful that you did.”

Spock paused. He had heard those words before, in a voice deepens by time and experience. It had taken much for his Jim to admit to it, but those feelings were not unique to this young version. The words gathered behind his teeth like a tide—held back not by shame, but by reverence. By grief.

He looked at Jim, at the stubborn tilt of his jaw, the hurt he carried like armor. The man who would rather believe himself broken than admit he'd survived.

Some truths were burdens. Others were bridges.
Spock made his decision.

"There is something I have not said," he began quietly, almost gently. "Because it is not mine to offer freely. But… my Jim is gone. And he would not have kept it from you, not if it might help."

Jim’s eyes flicked to his, wary. But he didn’t speak.

Spock’s voice remained calm, but it lost none of its weight. “He was not on the kill list. But survival still exacted a cost.” He hesitated, just for a breath. “There were times… when he traded his body. For food. For medicine. For other children.”

Jim stoped in his tracks, going utterly still.

“Sometimes, they did not bother to trade.”

The expanse was silent except for the wind, moaning like distant voices.

Spock continued. “He never spoke of it easily. But he did speak of it. Eventually. When he no longer believed it made him weak.” Spock looked away, his gaze distant. “It took years for him to believe that.”

Jim swallowed. His throat moved, but no sound came.

Spock looked back at him. His expression was unflinching, but there was something infinitely soft in it now. Not pity. Never pity.

“He healed. Slowly. And not alone.”

Jim drew in a breath like it hurt to do so. His voice was hoarse.

“…He was still a hero.”

Spock nodded. “Yes. He was also a victim.”

A pause.

“And so are you. The one does not preclude the other.”

Kirk cleared his throat and dragged a sleeve across his face like he could wipe away the weight of the conversation along with the cold.

"Right. Well." His voice was ragged but steadying, sarcastic in a way that sounded almost like him. "Don’t know about you, but I usually try not to unpack all my emotional trauma with Vulcans on ice planets. Not really my idea of a good time."

Spock lifted an eyebrow, the barest hint of amusement flickering in his eyes.

"Besides," Jim went on, turning and brushing frost off his uniform, "we’ve got a homicidal space miner with a planet-murdering death drill to stop. No time to dwell on my personal… nonsense."

He said it like it was absurd, like saving the world were a punchline. A memory stirred once again, this one filled with the song of whales.

Spock tilted his head. His voice, when it came, was quiet, but the corners of his mouth twitched.

“It would not be the first time.”

Jim blinked. Turned. “What?”

“Saving the world,” Spock said. “You have a certain… proclivity for it.”

Kirk stared at him, torn between disbelief and something else unspoken—something maybe like hope.

“Well,” he muttered, shoulders hitching with a dry, almost-smile, “let’s not break the streak then.”

They traveled along in silence, legs and time eating up the distance, but it was a different kind of silence now. Not one born of fear or ghosts.

It was the silence before the storm.

Kirk slung the strap of the survival pack over his shoulder, adjusting the weight until it sat comfortably against his spine. The cold had settled in his bones, but movement was helping, warming him up again, chasing off the fog that still clung to the edges of his mind.

Spock was checking the wind direction, scanning the sky from the crest of the ridge.

They walked on. Presently, Kirk spoke again.

"Hey... Spock?"

The older Vulcan turned his head slightly. "Yes,
James?"

Jim hesitated before clearly deciding to plow forward.

"Why?" Jim’s voice was low, uncertain. "Why was it so different? For me, I mean. Me and—him." He didn’t have to explain who him was. They both knew.

Spock was quiet for a moment, his face unreadable in the cold light. The fresh snow crunched beneath their feet.

"I have considered this question," he said eventually. "The divergence between your timelines began with the destruction of the Kelvin. Your father’s death altered the course of your life dramatically—emotionally, and developmentally. But the difference, I suspect, began before that. Not in the events themselves, but in how those events manifested."

"You think it’s because he had his dad."

"Not solely." Spock took a step closer, folding his hands behind his back. "Though that connection shaped him. But I believe it is more complicated than that. Environment, chance, opportunity... a thousand variables. Your pain is not a flaw in your design, James. It is a scar left by someone else’s cruelty."

Jim scoffed lightly, but it wasn’t mocking. More… exhausted.

"He fought back," he murmured. "He saved people. I just... survived."

"And what do you believe survival is, if not resistance?"

That made Jim pause. He looked away, out toward the snowfields stretching beyond the horizon.

Spock stepped beside him, gaze following his.

"You endured. You are still enduring. That, too, is a kind of heroism."

Jim didn’t answer, not right away. But he didn’t argue, either.

He adjusted the strap of the bag again, squared his shoulders, and nodded toward the horizon.

"Come on, old man. Let’s go save the galaxy."

Spock inclined his head.

"After you, Captain."

They walked in renewed silence for a while, boots digging in to frost-hardened snow. The wind had died down, but the cold still bit at their exposed skin, sharp and clean like truth.

Jim kept his eyes on the horizon, jaw set, brow furrowed as though trying to solve a puzzle only half-formed in his mind.

Spock walked beside him, hands clasped behind his back as he always had, posture straight despite the years and the weight he carried. He glanced at Jim, once.

Then again.

"Your eyes," Spock said, quiet.

Jim blinked, startled from whatever grim loop of thought he’d fallen into.

"What about them?"

Spock kept looking forward. "They are blue."

Jim looked at him sideways, wary. **"Okay…?"

Spock’s voice remained calm, but there was a thread of something else underneath it. Something fond. Something aching.

"My Jim’s eyes were hazel."

That stopped Jim short for just a moment.

"Huh." He picked up pace again. **"Weird."

Spock continued. "It was the first thing I noticed, after your voice. The cadence is similar. Your temper, more volatile. But it was your eyes that made the difference clear."

"Not just the eyes, I’m guessing," Jim said, voice dry.

"No," Spock said gently. "Not just that."

Jim let that hang in the air between them, unsure what to do with it.

Spock gave him space, but after a moment, added, "You asked what made you different. Governor Kodos, as he was then, separated his victims based on arbitrary genetic standards. Blue eyes. Fair skin. Certain blood markers. These were the criteria under which people were judged worthy. My Jim thusly failed that test. He was marked for death."

Jim’s throat tightened. He didn’t speak.

"He ran. He led others to safety. He was a child, and he bore leadership like a mantle, even then."

Spock paused, then turned slightly toward Jim.

"You were not spared because you were weaker, James. You were chosen because Kodos believed he had the right to determine who was worthy of life and who was not, using only the thinnest of excuses to commit genocide. You survived something monstrous. That is not shameful. That is extraordinary."

Jim exhaled, a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. That was happening a lot.

He didn’t say thank you.

But he didn’t look away either.

Jim swore under his breath, boots dragging a little as they crested the next rise. The horizon shimmered faintly with early morning light, but his thoughts were still trapped somewhere far behind them, tangled in ice and memory.

"It all leads back to Nero," he asserted bitterly.
"That bastard didn’t just kill my dad. He changed everything."

Spock turned his head, listening.

"I was born two months early," Jim continued. "In space. The Kelvin was under attack and my mom was in labor. The shuttle launched just in time, but… yeah. I came screaming into the world in a medical pod while everything burned."

He looked over at Spock, jaw tense.

"They didn’t even know if I’d make it at first. I was just… this tiny thing. Too early. Not fully cooked."

Spock’s brow furrowed, and then he nodded, slowly.

"My Jim was born in Iowa. At term. He weighed nearly four kilograms and, according to his Mother, roared like a lion within seconds of delivery."

Jim huffed a laugh that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

"Of course he did."

Spock’s tone shifted slightly, analytical now—safe ground.

"It is possible," he said, "that the radiation from the Kelvin’s warp core breach affected your perinatal development. Even minor exposure during critical stages can alter gene expression."

Jim blinked. "Wait—are you saying Nero’s attack rewrote my DNA?"

"Not your DNA itself," Spock corrected. "But which genes were activated or silenced. The field is known as epigenetics. It explains how two individuals with identical genomes can exhibit significant physiological and behavioral differences depending on environmental factors during development."

Jim was quiet for a moment. Then: "So the difference between me and him could’ve been decided in the first five minutes of my life?"

Spock hesitated, then said gently, "Not decided. Influenced."

Again, Jim didn’t answer right away.

But when he finally did, his voice was low, and hoarse.

"That’s a hell of a butterfly effect."

Spock only nodded.

Spock’s thoughts were heavy as they walked, the cold wind biting at their faces but doing little to numb the ache in his side. The silence stretched between them, a taut wire of unspoken words, yet it was a comfortable quiet.

Jim was processing—his words were fast, his mind quick—but now the young man was grappling with the reality of his existence, his past, and the insurmountable weight that came with it.

Spock glanced at him briefly, noting the tension in Jim’s posture. His breath came in shallow, steady bursts, the blue of his eyes distant, but not lost. Not yet.

As they walked, the sunlight grew brighter, the ice beneath their boots softening. The wind, sharp and crisp, whipped around them, but it was a beautiful world in its own right—icy cliffs towering against the sky, the glitter of frozen water reflecting the rays of the sun. It would have been perfect, if not for the gaping absence of Vulcan in the sky, that twin star that had once served as a beacon of home and purpose.

The void left in its wake gnawed at Spock’s core. He had not yet fully processed the enormity of his loss—the loss of Vulcan, of his people, his planet, his entire way of life. But even the briefest moments of clarity seemed to rip away that understanding. He could feel the faint ache inside him, as though the very fiber of his being were still struggling to hold itself together, still yearning for what he had lost.

Yet here, at this moment, in this strange, fractured timeline, he had found something else.

This Jim—this other Jim—had become an anchor in a universe that no longer made sense to him. Despite the differences, despite the way the universe had shifted, Jim was still Jim. And there was a strange, comforting weight to that.

His gaze drifted to the sky for a moment, but the absence of Vulcan was a reminder of everything they had lost.

It wasn’t until Jim broke the silence that Spock finally exhaled, his breath a cloud in the cold air.

"There it is," Jim muttered, pointing ahead.

Spock’s eyes followed his finger. There, just visible against the harsh white landscape, was the outpost—a tiny speck of civilization in the midst of the wilderness. The flickering light of a signal tower reached across the horizon, faint but steady.

The storm was gone now. The worst of their journey was behind them. But the truth of what was to come loomed ahead. There would be no easy answers. There never were.

Spock sighed, the sound barely audible in the wind.

He allowed himself a moment, just a moment, to look at Jim again. The way he stood, his shoulders squared, his face still marked by the remnants of fear but with a strength beneath it—a determination to press on.

Jim was remarkable.

And Spock would not fail him.

"We should make haste," he said, voice firm yet soft. "The sooner we reach the outpost, the sooner we can contact the Enterprise."

Jim nodded, his lips tight, but a flicker of resolve returned to his gaze.

"Right. Time to save the world."

Jim leaned forward, intent on doing just that.

And, as always, Spock followed.

Chapter Text

The outpost rose over the ridge—squat, functional, unmistakably Starfleet. But as Spock stood beside James T. Kirk and gazed down at it, he felt a strange dislocation in his gut.
It was familiar. And it was not.

The architecture was precisely as he remembered: standardized alloy plating, reinforced pressure seals, the blinking beacon at the top rotating in slow, predictable intervals. It was one of hundreds, if not thousands, of outposts manufactured to withstand the harshest planetary conditions. He had seen dozens like it.

But never quite this one.

The edges were too sharp. The paint too sterile, its hues a muted, color-corrected grey that lacked the subtle warmth of older installations.

The outpost was…new. Mass-produced, perhaps, with post-Kelvin urgency. There was an efficient emptiness to it, a sense of something copied from blueprints without ever being lived in.

Another small divergence. Another whisper that this was not his home.

Spock inhaled. The air was thin, cold, but it burned less now than it had six hours ago. The storm was behind them. The climb was done.

Beside him, James shifted the bag on his shoulder and exhaled slowly, eyes locked on the outpost like it might vanish if he blinked.
Spock did not speak. Not yet.

Instead, he filed the feeling away—the sense that even familiarity was suspect now. That every known thing in this world had been subtly re-tuned to a frequency he could recognize but not call his own.

This universe was not broken.

It was simply not his.

The door sealed behind them with a hiss, the warmth of the outpost like a slap after so many hours in the bitter cold. Kirk exhaled sharply, half a groan, half a laugh, his boots slush-wet on the floor. Spock followed in silence, his eyes already scanning the interior—barebones, functional, as expected. Consoles hummed softly. A thermal generator pulsed in the corner.

A small, boxy alien hustled ahead, clearly excited, chirping something as he led them through a corridor. The noise drew a response—muffled grumbling from deeper in the station. A moment later, the source rounded the corner, scowling, eyes bleary with sleep and irritation.

Montgomery Scott.

Spock’s breath caught in a way it should not have.

Out of all the billions of people scattered across the Federation, across this fractured and reborn timeline… James T. Kirk. Montgomery Scott.

Both of them, here.

He let none of it show. But inside, something ancient and aching stirred.

Fascinating.

He watched as Scott argued with the alien, gesturing at some mechanical tangle behind him. The man was clearly brilliant, and clearly stranded. Exiled, likely—Starfleet’s way of tucking genius where it would cause the least disruption.

Spock thought back to what Jim once told him—his Jim—after returning from the mirror universe. Some things are constant, he’d said, voice laced with wonder and unease. No matter how different the circumstances, some pieces of the puzzle just… showed up.

Three data points now. Enough to suggest a pattern.

If they survived this, if they managed to stop Nero, if they found a future in the wreckage of Vulcan and everything else—

Spock intended to look into it.

There was something here. Some cosmic symmetry beneath the chaos. Some law of convergence that bound the same souls to the same stars, again and again.

He filed it away. Later. First, the Enterprise. Secondly, Earth.

Then, the puzzle.

************

Scott’s first thought, as he stared at the tall Vulcan and the half-frozen lad with blue eyes and a busted lip, was that he’d finally gone space mad.

That was the only reasonable explanation. The isolation. The experiments. The bloody beagle. That wretched transporter prototype—it should have worked. Technically, it did work, but that was hardly comforting when the Admiral’s dog disappeared mid-transport and never came back.

And now this.

Time travel. Universe hopping. Planets imploding.

PLANETS.

It was all a bit much to process on two hours of sleep and a belly full of nutrient paste. He should have been furious. Or stunned. Or fainting dramatically into a wall panel. But mostly?

Mostly, he just wanted a sandwich.

“Aye,” he muttered aloud, more to himself than anyone, “I think I’ll be filing for retirement.

That’s it. Done. Wrap it up. Goin’ back to Earth, find a nice quiet moon with a pub.”

Except no. Apparently Earth was next.

“Wha tae feck?!” Scott blurted, throwing up his hands. “You’re telling me that some Romulan psychopath from the future chased a Starfleet vessel across the bloody galaxy-creating an entirely different timeline in the process mind ye—then implodin’ Vulcan, —and now Earth’s on the choppin’ block?”

The Vulcan nodded, serene as a frozen lake.

The kid next to him just sighed, like he was too tired to be impressed.

Scott stared. Then let out a sharp, incredulous laugh.

“This is all because of that damn dog,” he said.

“Y’know that, right? A butterfly flaps its wings, and suddenly I’m the only engineer on this rock, about to get conscripted into a rescue mission with a lad who looks like he went three rounds with a mugato and a Vulcan who—by the way—knows my bloody name.”

He absently tapped his fingers on the console.

“A sandwich,” he said again, pitifully. “I just wanted a sandwich.”

No one offered him one. Of course

*************

Spock regarded Montgomery Scott with something nearing fondness—an emotion he would have, at one time, hesitated to identify so plainly.

But fondness it was.

Scott has not changed, not in any essential way. The timeline had twisted itself into impossible shapes, and yet here he was: irreverent, irritable, brilliant. And still, very clearly, hungry.

Spock activated the outpost’s auxiliary display, the icy-blue glow casting faint reflections across the bulkheads. He entered a complex series of equations into the interface with crisp, methodical precision.

“This,” he said, “is a formula for long-distance beam transport: transwarp beaming. It allows for transportation onto a ship moving at warp velocity.”

Scott’s jaw dropped.

“This—this is impossible,” he said, stepping forward, eyes sweeping over the math like a starving man at a banquet. “You’d need a compensatory field generator, and an algorithm to predict ship trajectory to within—bloody hell—picoseconds!”

“Yes,” Spock replied. “You will invent it. In fact, you already have. In my timeline.”

Scott looked up, flabbergasted. “What? Ok, explain it to me again.”

“Very well,” Spock said calmly. “I am not of this universe. I traveled here through an accidental singularity caused by my attempt to prevent the destruction of Romulus in the late 24th century.

You, in that timeline, developed this formula. I merely remember it.”

There was a long pause. Then Scott said, faintly,

“You know this violates about twelve different sections of the temporal prime directive.”

Spock lifted a single brow.

“I am aware,” he said. “I simply do not care.”

The words fell like a hammer. Even Kirk glanced over at him, startled.

But Spock stood firm.

“There are occasions,” he said, “when logic must yield to necessity. This is one of them.”

And somewhere deep within the quiet of his mind, he could hear the echo of Jim’s laughter—his Jim, ever irreverent, ever reckless. Ever willing to break the rules if it meant saving lives.

He would be proud, Spock thought, and felt the ache of loss pulse through him like starlight.

“You know,” the strange, brittle mirror of his captain mused, intruding on Spock’s thoughts. “Coming back in time, changing all our lives…that’s cheating.”

Spock allowed a small smile to show up on his weary face. “A trick I learned,” he stated wryly, “from an old friend.”

“Yes,” he thought, awash in a sense of great fondness. “He would be very proud.”

***********

Kirk sat on a bench near the edge of the outpost's small control bay, hands steepled under his chin, eyes flicking between Spock and Scott as they worked. Equations scrolled across displays faster than he could follow, both men immersed in the hum of impossible math and warp theory.

Jim was planning.

Step one: beam onto a ship at warp speed. Absurd. Insane. Absolutely perfect. It would be the kind of stunt that legends were built on—if they survived.

Step two: get to the bridge. Convince the other Spock—the young Spock—that Jim wasn’t just some reckless idiot high on adrenaline and stubbornness. Convince him that Earth was next. That they had no time to wait. That this was the moment everything changed.

Jim cracked a grin.

He imagined the look on young Spock’s face when old Spock walked onto that bridge. That perfectly stoic Vulcan composure shattered for just a second, eyebrows trying to leap off his face. Jim could not wait to see that.

And maybe—maybe—in that moment, when Spock saw himself, really saw himself, he’d realize Jim wasn’t just some anomaly or adversary. He’d realize they were stronger together. That maybe fate, the timeline, the entire damn universe wanted them on the same side.

Jim’s smile faded just a touch, thinking of Vulcan. Thinking of Earth. Thinking of all the people who wouldn’t get another chance unless they made one.

He leaned forward, clasped his hands.

“All right,” he muttered to himself. “Step three: save the world.”

He glanced up at the transporter pad, then at the two men assembling history.
“No pressure.”

Then Old man Spock tried to convince him to leave the Vulcan behind.

Fuck that.

Kirk crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.

“Right. So I go alone. Because paradox.” He made a vague hand-wavy gesture. “Temporal integrity. Butterfly wings. Cats marrying dogs. Got it.”

Spock raised a brow. “The risk—”

“Is bullshit,” Kirk cut in, voice sharp but not unkind. “You already did. You met your younger self. I saw it, Spock. In the meld. And yeah, maybe it scrambled things a bit, maybe the donut god had a few complaints, but the universe didn’t collapse into a singularity.”

Spock Prime hesitated. Kirk idly wondered if part of that was him processing Jim’s referral to the Guardian of Forever as ‘the donut god.’

Time travel was so weird.

Jim leaned forward. “You think I don’t understand what you’re trying to do? Keep the timeline ‘clean’? Minimize contamination? But it’s already contaminated. Vulcan is gone. My dad died in a firefight that didn’t happen in your time.

I was born premature on a damn escape pod. You can’t protect this reality from what’s already happened.”

Spock Prime’s silence stretched, brittle.

Kirk softened, just a fraction. “Look… I get it. You’re trying to protect your younger self. I would too. But this isn’t about preserving some idealized timeline. This is about survival. Earth’s survival. Everyone’s survival.”

Spock looked away for a beat, then nodded slowly.

“You are…most persuasive,” he said, almost to himself.

Jim smirked, but there was no triumph in it.

“Yeah. Weird how surviving a planet-wide genocide and a childhood war crime will sharpen a guy’s bullshit meter.”

Spock gave a sigh that was nearly a laugh, nearly a sob. “Then let us prepare. Together.”

Kirk clapped his hands once. “Now that’s more like it. Let’s go bend the laws of physics.”

*************

Spock watched the younger man with a mixture of exasperation and awe. Ah, Jim…

In all his timelines, in all the fractured echoes of reality he had glimpsed through meld and madness, James T. Kirk has always been a constant. Stubborn. Brash. Impossibly compassionate. Terrifyingly brave.

And thank the stars for it.

Spock inclined his head, accepting the inevitable. “Very well,” he said quietly, as much to himself as to Kirk.

He stepped onto the transporter pad, joining his not-quite captain, the Gallic engineer, and the small alien whose name he had not yet caught.

Perhaps the universe had changed. Perhaps it had been torn apart and rewritten with fire and grief—but if James T. Kirk still stood at the heart of it, defiant in the face of obliteration…

Then perhaps there was still hope.

He looked to Scotty, who was already muttering under his breath as he set the coordinates and calibrated for warp transport. A statistical improbability bordering on the absurd—but that, too, was strangely familiar.

Spock met Kirk’s eyes.

“Energize.”

Chapter Text

The beam snapped them into existence mid-warp, deep in the bowels of the Enterprise. Safe and sound, just as Spock had promised.

Well, mostly.

Jim staggered as the deck materialized beneath him, cold metal against boots still damp from snow. The Enterprise. The real, breathing Enterprise—sleek and humming with power. He hardly had time to marvel before the alarms started blaring.

"Security breach in Engineering!" a voice barked over the comms.

"Well, that’s us," Jim muttered, grabbing Scotty by the sleeve. "Move!"

He barely caught a glimpse of Keenser sprinting off in another direction before he and Scotty bolted toward the nearest console—right in time to see a flashing schematic.

Something was wrong.

"Where’s the old man?" Jim barked, scanning wildly. Scotty cursed, pointing at the screen.

A red blip. Trapped inside a maintenance pipe.
A maintenance pipe full of water.

"That’s no place for a Vulcan!" Scotty yelled, already scrambling to access the systems. Jim didn’t hesitate. He dove to the manual controls, fingers flying.

The pressure gauge was spiking. The current was pulling harder. If they didn’t get him out now—

He slammed the override.

The hatch burst open with a hydraulic scream, and a torrent of water exploded out onto the deck. Coughing, half-drowned, The elder Spock tumbled out after it, limp as a rag.

"Got him!" Jim shouted, hauling Spock clear as the last of the water sluiced away. Spock choked violently, spasming once before going terrifyingly still.

"Come on, come on," Jim muttered under his breath, turning him onto his side, thumping him between the shoulder blades like Bones had shown him a lifetime ago. Water spilled from Spock’s mouth in a thin, sickening stream.

Vulcans weren’t built for this. Jim knew it instinctively. Desert people. Thin blood, heavy lungs, all wrong for cold drowning.

"Hang in there, old man," Jim said, voice breaking slightly.

At last, Spock sucked in a ragged, shuddering breath. His hands clawed weakly at the deck, seeking purchase, finding none. His eyes fluttered open, dazed and dark.

Jim let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

"You're alright," he said, low and urgent. "You're safe. I've got you."

Scott skidded to a stop beside them, wide-eyed.

"One…," he paused, coughing up some more water, and then gasped. "One minor miscalculation. On my enterprise, this space was reserved for botanical specimens only.” He shook his head, “Ripples in a pond…” he mused.

Spock coughed again, curling slightly against the deck as if even the air itself hurt.

"Not... ideal," he rasped, voice barely audible.

Jim gave a strained laugh. "Yeah. Welcome aboard."

Beneath them, the ship rumbled. Time was running out.

***************

Spock felt hands on him—steady, human, urgent.

Jim.

He allowed himself to be hauled upright, though every muscle in his body protested. His limbs trembled from more than exertion; the cold water still clung to him, dragging heat from his frame in a way no Vulcan was built to endure. He swayed, and Jim's grip tightened at his elbow, keeping him steady.

Spock blinked against the water in his eyes and forced his mind into order.

The deck beneath his boots was familiar, yet not. The hum of the engines, the subtle vibration through the metal—yes. But the maintenance systems… No. Not the same.

There was no hydraulic water system of this design aboard the Enterprise of his memory. The maintenance tubes had been dry, narrow, built for quick access and rapid evacuation if needed.

Nothing like the water-filled death trap he had just barely survived.

Once again, the timeline’s divergences revealed themselves in fascinating—and perilous—ways.
He considered the possibilities even as Jim braced him carefully, speaking quietly. The changes must have been made early: a shift in design philosophy, perhaps, in response to the Kelvin disaster. Starfleet engineers opting for multi-system coolant backups rather than strictly redundant circuits. Logical, under the circumstances.

Strange, how one tragedy could ripple outward to touch even the shape of the pipes beneath his feet.

At least it had not killed him.

Quite.

He met Jim’s eyes, saw the lingering panic there, the fierce relief barely hidden beneath the usual bravado.

"I am… functional," Spock said quietly, as much to reassure Jim as to convince himself.

Jim huffed a soft, disbelieving laugh but didn’t let go of his arm.

Together, they turned toward the corridor.

Toward the bridge.

Toward whatever came next.

Spock watched Jim as they moved through the dimly lit corridors. Watched the way his eyes flicked constantly between junctions and turbolift doors, cataloging every exit, every guard, every risk. Watched the way he kept close, steadying Spock with a hand that hovered without quite touching—ready to catch him again if needed.

His Jim had worn that same expression, all too often.

It stirred something deep in Spock’s chest, something that ached like an old, healing wound.

They were nearly to the turbolift when the security team intercepted them.

A squad of redshirts, phasers already drawn. Their leader—a broad-shouldered human with a square jaw and the unmistakable posture of someone who had been both wary and ready for a fight long before they received the alert—stepped forward.

Spock saw the recognition flash across Jim’s face the instant the man spoke.

“Well, if it isn't Cupcake,” the officer drawled, a wicked grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Jim closed his eyes briefly, as if offering a silent prayer to the universe for mercy. Then he exhaled through his nose in resignation—a shared memory stirred. Jim wore the expression of a man reaping the consequences of decisions made during a drunken brawl in an Iowan bar.

The meld, it seemed, had not been as one sided as Spock would have liked.

Kaidith. What is, is.

Jim straightened. His voice, when he spoke, was calm and formal, the cadences sharp.

"Chief Petty Officer Hendorff," Jim said. "We need your help. Starfleet is under threat. Earth is under threat. And we are the only ones in a position to stop it."

For a moment, something shifted in Hendorff’s expression. Recognition. Maybe even curiosity. But it vanished beneath a wall of regulation and mistrust.

"You're under arrest," Hendorff said flatly. "Orders from the acting captain."

Two of the security officers stepped forward, hands at Jim’s arms.

Spock tilted his head slightly, considering.
Hendorff. The name stirred an old, painful memory. Gamma Trianguli VI. A bright, deadly planet. A spike-flower striking without warning. Hendorff collapsing, dead before he hit the ground.

Jim—his Jim—kneeling over him, hands bloody, helpless. A tight whisper on an alien breeze: I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Jim had grieved every loss, but that mission had been particularly brutal. Hendorff’s death had been shocking enough, but to lose Kaplan, Mallory, and Marple in short order had triggered much self recrimination in his captain. At the time, Spock had not quite understood the justification for Jim’s upset when Spock had, mostly unintentionally, chosen to take the blast of the second flower instead of himself. Now, looking back through the lens of time and experience, his reasoning had become much more clear. James T. Kirk took every loss to heart, and he had sworn to never allow those deaths to be meaningless, if he could help it.

He wondered where the other three had ended up here.

Spock let the memory settle, a quiet echo.

Another reminder of the fragile threads connecting past and future, this life and the other.

This Hendorff lived. For now.

And if they succeeded—he might live longer still.

Spock allowed himself to be marched forward,

feeling the phaser press lightly between his shoulder blades.

No matter. They were heading toward the bridge.

Exactly where they needed to be.

**************

The turbolift hummed under their feet as it shot upward, the cramped car packed shoulder to shoulder with security officers, Jim, Scotty, Keenser, and Spock.

Jim shifted slightly, trying to get a little breathing room and immediately regretted it—his shoulder twinged, a deep bruise blooming beneath his uniform where young Spock had nerve-pinched him into unconsciousness. He winced and caught Hendorff’s sharp glance. Right. Better not look weak right now.

"You know," Jim said, pitching his voice low and conversational, "you don't have to haul us to the bridge like prisoners. You could listen for thirty seconds and maybe help save Earth."

Hendorff didn’t even blink. "Cadet, you're unauthorized personnel aboard a Federation starship. My orders are to bring you directly to the captain."

An unspoken, ‘you stupid farm boy hick,’ was very much implied.

Jim suppressed a sigh.

"Name’s not 'farm boy' anymore," he muttered.

"Look, Ensign, about the Cupcake thing…”

“Like you even care…” the bigger man scoffed.

Jim regarded him. “Security Division. Second shift." He ticked it off casually, watching the brief flash of surprise in Hendorff’s eyes before it shuttered again.

Jim pressed, leaning in just enough to make it personal. "You joined Starfleet to make a difference, right? Well, this is your shot. We’re not the enemy. Nero is. If we don’t stop him, Earth’s next."

Hendorff said nothing. His face was grim, professional. But he didn’t shove Jim back, either. Small victories.

Jim glanced sideways at Spock—Spock Prime?-still damp from the transporter mishap, his breathing steady but shallow. Guilt gnawed at the back of Jim’s mind. Spock looked worse than he let on. Vulcans weren't built for that kind of submersion. Jim hadn’t missed how Spock had leaned a little heavier on him getting out of that damned water tube.

He'd have to keep an eye on him.

And then there was the other problem—the young Spock. Jim flexed his sore shoulder again and grimaced. He remembered the fury in Spock’s eyes, the cold precision of that nerve pinch, the way he’d been tossed off the Enterprise like so much garbage. He was about to march back onto his bridge and challenge him again. Only this time... he was supposed to take command.

Jim’s stomach twisted.

What if Spock Prime was wrong? What if Jim wasn’t ready? Trusting him with the future of Earth, the future of the Federation... It felt like wearing a uniform two sizes too big.

Across the lift, Scotty whistled low under his breath, clearly trying and failing to contain his awe.

"Look at these systems," he muttered, running his fingers along the glossy paneling. "State of the art. Positronic relay networks, variable warp cores... Aye, she's a beauty."

Keenser, perched stoically beside him, said nothing, but his massive dark eyes flicked around the turbolift with what Jim guessed was cautious approval.

The car jolted to a stop. Jim straightened, schooling his features into something resembling confidence. Show no fear. If he hesitated now, he was dead. They were all dead.

The doors slid open with a soft chime.

Showtime.

**************

Spock stood rigid at the center of the bridge, every muscle in his body wound tight beneath the thin veneer of calm.

He was furious.

It simmered, low and volcanic, under his skin—a rage so potent it was almost its own lifeform. He crushed it with discipline, smothered it with logic, but it clawed at him, persistent and ugly.

James Tiberius Kirk.

A disgrace of a cadet. An irritant. A relentless, stubborn, reckless infestation of a human being. Spock watched him stride onto the bridge now, flanked by two unfamiliar civilians, a squat alien, and—

Spock's eyes flicked, for the briefest instant, to the soaked, pale figure trailing in Kirk's wake. His mind registered the older Vulcan’s presence but refused, for the moment, to acknowledge it fully.

Focus.

Kirk.

Spock’s hand twitched behind his back before he forced it still. Kirk was like a k'khalan, the desert pestilence of ancient Vulcan—small, persistent, nearly impossible to eradicate. They infested water stores and ration caches, surviving on less than any sane creature could endure. And once they took root, it was almost impossible to dislodge them without burning everything to the ground.

Spock briefly, dispassionately, wondered if any k'khalan had survived the death of Vulcan.

Another loss. Another species erased.
Another failure.

He pushed the thought aside.

Now, he regarded the newcomers coldly, hiding the black tide of anger behind an expression of perfect neutrality. His hands clasped neatly behind him. His stance was textbook Starfleet.

His breathing was slow and even.
He was in control.

He was the master of his emotions.

He repeated the mantra like a shield between himself and the world: I am Vulcan. I am calm. I am in control.

He almost believed it.

Almost.

Spock’s voice cut through the heavy air of the bridge, crisp and cold.
"Explain yourself, Cadet. How did you return to this ship?"

Kirk, astonishingly, did not smirk, did not swagger. He stood straight, meeting Spock's gaze head-on, and for once, seemed… almost contrite.

"Look," Kirk said, tone strangely earnest. "I know we got off on the wrong foot."
An odd Terran metaphor. Spock’s mouth tightened.
"But I really need you to listen."

The casual familiarity of it—the assumption that they were somehow equals, allies—infuriated Spock further. His control frayed, infinitesimally, beneath the surface. His mother was dead. His world was gone. His hands still remembered the force it had taken to throw this impudent, reckless creature from the bridge. And now Kirk stood before him, pleading for attention like a stubborn child.

Spock turned sharply to the field promoted security chief.

"Detain him," he ordered. His voice was steady, but there was no mistaking the steel beneath it. "Place him in the brig. Sedate him if necessary."

At once, the security team moved forward.

Chaos erupted.

McCoy—Dr. Leonard McCoy, Spock’s mind supplied—stepped forward, already objecting loudly. "You can't just throw him in a cell, he's trying to help!"
Kirk, of course, pushed back as two guards grabbed his arms. "Spock, dammit, listen to me!"

Spock ignored the commotion. It was noise. A distraction. He turned back toward the viewscreen, where the stars bled past them at warp, heading toward the Laurentian system. He needed focus. He needed order.

Earth depended on it.

He had no time for this... disruption.

And then—

Another voice.

Older. Deeper. Infinitely familiar in ways that sent a cold, jarring shock through every nerve ending.

"Commander Spock," the elder Vulcan said, calm as a mountain beneath the storm. "If you would allow me to explain."

Spock stiffened.

Every instinct screamed at him that something fundamental had just shifted. Something he could neither see nor name.

Slowly, reluctantly, he turned to face the speaker.

Spock turned fully, his gaze locking onto the older Vulcan who stood among the detained intruders.

The man was disheveled—his robes still heavy with moisture, his hair clinging awkwardly to his temples. He looked, by all physical accounts, like a half-drowned sehlat cub, dragged unceremoniously through a storm.

And yet... he held himself with a quiet dignity that could not be feigned. A presence that demanded respect, even standing there, shackled by circumstance and sodden clothes.

Spock’s mind raced.

The pieces were there—had been there since the moment he and Uhura had analyzed the Narada’s attack on Vulcan. Since the moment they realized Nero was a time traveler. Since the moment Nero had looked at him with hatred that burned far too personal.

A temporal incursion.
Nero’s familiarity.
This older Vulcan’s impossible familiarity.

The logical conclusion presented itself, clean and brutal as a blade:

This man was himself.

Or rather... an alternate iteration of himself. A version aged by decades Spock had not yet lived. Tempered by experiences he could not yet fathom.

It was irrational to feel anything about it.
But Spock felt the ground shift slightly beneath his feet anyway.

He stepped forward, ignoring Kirk’s renewed struggle with the guards, ignoring McCoy’s curses, ignoring even the curious glances of the bridge crew.

He faced the older Vulcan directly.

"You are..." he said carefully, voice low, "...Spock."

The older Vulcan inclined his head, a small, almost imperceptible nod.

"Indeed I am," he said.

Kirk took advantage of the guard’s temporary surprise to pull away and cross his arms, but other than that, remained unusually silent.

Spock drew in a breath. His heart pounded once, hard, against his ribs.
For a single, fragile moment, he was not the commanding officer of the Enterprise.
He was simply a son without a home, staring at a reflection cast across impossible distance and time.

Kirk took a step forward, hands raised in a placating gesture.
"Please. Just listen to him," he said, his voice strained but sincere. "You don’t have to believe me. But believe him."

Spock did not look at Kirk.
His attention remained fixed—piercing—on the older Vulcan, the soaked and battered figure who somehow still held himself with quiet dignity.
Despite all appearances, he stood straighter than anyone else on the bridge.

Spock drew a slow breath.
The conclusion was inescapable: this individual was himself. An older version, displaced by forces that even now threatened the survival of their people—and the galaxy.

He did not ask the obvious question. There was no need.
Instead, he lifted a brow in expectation.

The older Spock inclined his head, a faint gleam of pride in his weary eyes.
"You have reasoned correctly," he said. "Even under…most unusual circumstances."

Spock felt the faintest flicker of something—satisfaction?—but crushed it swiftly.
He must remain in control. He was acting captain. Duty demanded it.

"You recognize, then, the difficulty of accepting such a claim without evidence," Spock said coolly.

"Indeed," the older Spock replied. His voice was steady, sure. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

He took a half-step forward, slow and deliberate.
"I can provide that evidence," he continued. "If you permit it…a mind meld."

The words struck Spock harder than a blow.
A meld.
The most intimate of bonds, the most sacred of Vulcan traditions.
Even between kin—between selves—it was not offered lightly.

Spock masked his internal disquiet with studied stillness.
He could not afford uncertainty.
Surely…surely he could trust himself.

"You offer this freely?" he asked at last, voice carefully even.

"I do," said the older Spock. His expression was serene, but something deeper flickered beneath it—an exhaustion Spock could not help but recognize.
"The choice is yours."

The bridge was utterly silent.
The weight of the moment pressed down on Spock like gravity.

Slowly, he stepped forward.
He did not falter.

My mind to your mind, he thought, steadying himself for the unknown

The bridge dissolved.

For an instant, the younger Spock felt himself falling into a great current—deeper, faster, brighter than he had ever known. It was not chaotic, as he had always feared a meld might be. It was ordered, structured like the branching paths of a great river. He was swept along, a silent observer to another life.

Nero.
Spock saw him clearly—Romulan, scarred, wild-eyed with grief and rage. He saw a planet’s destruction again, but differently—saw it through the lens of another timeline, saw the black hole meant to save Romulus, saw the shattering of hope, saw Spock Prime’s failure.

It was not madness that drove Nero. It was grief.

Endless, bottomless grief.

Spock reeled, but the meld pushed him onward.

He saw a younger version of himself—of Spock Prime—standing among Vulcan elders, speaking with measured authority. He saw a grey-haired woman smiling proudly at him, reaching to clasp his hand.
Mother.
His mother's face. Older than he remembered, but radiant with life and pride.

The image struck Spock like a physical blow.

His composure fractured; he fought the flood, tried to wrench free—but the meld was merciless in its clarity.
The older Spock’s soul was open to him, and there was no hiding from what came next.

A flash—another man.
James T. Kirk.
Not the reckless cadet from this world’s Iowa. A captain. A man worn and bright all at once.

Spock saw him laughing, shouting orders on the bridge, arguing fiercely in the heat of some crisis—and standing silently at Spock Prime’s side during a moment of unbearable grief.
The bond between them was unmistakable.
A bond. Not merely camaraderie. Not merely friendship. Something deeper. Something—more.

Spock gasped soundlessly inside the meld.

He had never imagined such a thing between himself and another. The very idea of it was destabilizing, impossible—

And yet.

Through the fading threads of the older Spock’s memory, he felt it: a faint echo across time and mind. A whisper from Kirk Prime’s soul, reaching through the bond they had once shared.

And somehow, impossibly, Kelvin Spock felt the answering hollow in himself.

A need.
A longing.

And the terrifying, shattering realization that he wanted it too.

Even if it was with Kirk.

The meld began to collapse—too much, too fast—and Spock tore himself back to himself with a shuddering breath, nearly staggering.

The bridge reformed around him in an instant of overwhelming sensory overload.

Spock Prime stood before him, quiet, waiting. No judgment in his gaze. Only understanding.

Younger Spock struggled for words. His hands trembled faintly at his sides, shameful and unnoticed.

James T. Kirk was staring at him with his piercing blue eyes, worry written plain across his battered face.

Kelvin Spock swallowed hard, centering himself the only way he knew:
Through discipline. Through duty. Through action.

But something inside him had shifted.
Irrevocably.

For a moment, the world was a blur of noise and motion.
Spock staggered under the crushing weight of what he had seen, struggling to gather the shattered remnants of his mind into something resembling coherence.

A hand—warm, steady—reached toward him.

Kirk.

Kelvin Spock recoiled instinctively, a sharp breath tearing free from his throat.
No. He could not—must not—allow contact. His shields were a ruin, barely holding. If this Kirk’s mind was even half as fierce, as vibrant, as the one he had glimpsed through Spock Prime's bond… Spock would be lost. Swept away like a leaf in a supernova.

Kirk froze, his hand dropping back, confusion flickering across his face.
Did he not know?
Surely he had seen it—the bond—the connection that tied their counterparts together with silken steel.

Yet… there was only puzzled concern in Kirk’s expression. No flicker of awareness. No knowing grief.
Perhaps the older Spock had shielded it during their meld. Perhaps this Kirk did not understand what had been entrusted to him.

No matter.

Spock straightened by sheer force of will, pushing the chaos down, locking it behind the battered remnants of his discipline.
He inhaled sharply, squaring his shoulders. His hand curled behind his back, the picture of command.

The logical course was clear.
Whatever personal turmoil now threatened to drown him was irrelevant.

Earth was in danger.
His people were scattered and broken.
Duty remained.

He raised his gaze, meeting Kirk’s with all the solemn weight of his heritage.

“I am emotionally compromised,” Spock said quietly, voice steady despite the tremor deep inside him. “I must relinquish command.”
A flicker of shock crossed Kirk’s bruised features, quickly hidden.

Spock’s mouth twitched—almost a bitter smile.

“You must assume command…Captain Kirk,” he said, and the words tasted strange on his tongue. “You are the senior officer present… and you are capable.”

Kirk looked at him as if he wasn’t sure whether to argue, or salute, or catch him if he collapsed.
Behind them, Scotty sucked in a sharp breath, clearly realizing the significance of the moment.

Even Keenser blinked, solemn.

And Spock Prime—
The older Spock watched silently, a faint gleam of something like pride in his weary eyes.
Spock turned his face away from them all, clenching his hands behind his back to hide their slight tremble.
There was no need for them to see.

He had made the only choice he could.

Even if part of him—a reckless, yearning part he barely recognized—screamed for something else entirely.

**************

Before Kirk could even process the weight of the moment—the fact that Spock, Spock, had just surrendered command to him—another sound cut through the charged silence.

A soft gasp.
A stumble.

Kirk turned just in time to see Spock Prime sway on his feet, his normally measured balance failing him.

“Spock!” Kirk barked, lunging forward.

McCoy was faster.
The doctor darted to Spock Prime’s side,
grabbing his arm just as the old Vulcan crumpled. Kirk caught the other side, together lowering him gently to the deck before he could fall hard.

“Dammit—someone get a med team up here!” McCoy snapped, already pulling his scanner free from his belt with frantic efficiency. His hands moved automatically, scanning, checking vitals, muttering curses under his breath.

Spock Prime opened his eyes just a sliver, breathing shallowly. Despite everything—despite the grief, the exhaustion, the desperate tangle of events that had brought him here—
He smiled.

A soft, sad, knowing smile.

It froze everyone around him like a hypospray to the brain.

Kirk stared down at him, gut twisting strangely.
Vulcans never smiled like that.

McCoy visibly recoiled for half a second, as if Spock Prime had sprouted a second head.
“—Well that’s just not fair," McCoy muttered darkly, running the scanner again. "Now you’re smiling at me? You’re dying, and you’re smiling? That’s worse than anything."

“No dying,” Spock Prime whispered, faint but firm. His voice had that resonant gravity that made everyone lean in to listen.
“Just… too much, too soon, with too little rest.”

Kirk tightened his grip on the old Vulcan’s arm instinctively, steadying him even as he looked up toward McCoy.

“What’s wrong with him?” Kirk demanded. “Is he—?”

“Exhausted. Dehydrated. Electrolyte imbalance, stress shock, neural strain—hell, take your pick!” McCoy barked, already digging out a hypo and prepping a saline shot. “He’s running on fumes and stubbornness.”

He pressed the hypo to Spock Prime’s neck with a sharp hiss. Spock barely flinched.

The other Spock stood nearby, rigid as stone, his dark eyes locked onto his older self with something like horror barely hidden under his careful mask.

Kirk squeezed Spock Prime’s arm, feeling the frail tremor beneath the thin, soaked fabric of the borrowed uniform.

“Hang on, old man,” Kirk said under his breath. “I’ll take it from here.”

Spock Prime’s eyes crinkled faintly. A breath that might have been a laugh—or just the echo of one—shivered out of him before he closed his eyes again and let himself be supported by his friends.

“And sit down before you fall down,” Bones added.

“Tactful as always, Doctor McCoy,” Spock Prime said weakly, but with a faint note of humor threading through his hoarse voice. His eyes, half-lidded with fatigue, still gleamed with unmistakable warmth. “Still…I could not be in better hands.”

McCoy huffed under his breath, but said hands grew gentler as he adjusted the readings on his tricorder.

Spock Prime shifted his gaze toward Jim.
Focused. Steady. Sure.

“Go,” the old Vulcan said, the word low but certain. “Take the chair. You have my utmost confidence…Jim.”

The way he said it—like it was the most natural thing in the universe, like it had been said a hundred times before—sent a shiver down Jim’s spine.

For a heartbeat, Kirk hesitated.
He glanced around the bridge, feeling the weight of dozens of eyes on him: security, helmsmen, science officers…all waiting, watching.
The younger Spock stood rigid by the science console, unreadable but no longer moving to stop him.

You have to believe it, Jim told himself. Or they won’t either.

He swallowed once, steeling himself.
Then, with slow, deliberate steps, he crossed to the command chair.

He lowered himself into it—straightening, squaring his shoulders—not like he was stealing it, but like it already belonged to him.

The deck seemed to still under him.
The universe itself seemed to tilt.

Kirk turned his head, sharp, commanding.

“All stations, report.”

Chapter Text

The chair, something he had aspired towards for the better part of three years now, beckoned.

It didn’t feel like victory.

Kirk eased into it as if might bite. It didn’t, but it sure didn’t feel like it welcomed him either. He rested his hands on the arms, squared his shoulders, and glanced around the bridge.

Frightened faces stared back, exhausted, hopeful, young…their lives and the lives of everyone on earth now depended upon the decisions of James T. Kirk.

He felt the burden settle around his neck like a lodestone.

“Status report,” Kirk managed, voice louder than it needed to be. It echoed slightly. Too green, too new. He swallowed and steadied it.

“Let’s hear it.”

Chekov was first. “Minor hull damage on decks seven and eight. Shields vented plasma near the deflector array but stabilized. Ve took a hit, but not a bad one.” He looked proud.

Damn, the kid couldn’t be more than nineteen…focus Kirk…

Sulu, cool and precise, went next, “Maneuvering thrusters are at eighty percent. Main engines holding. Navigational sensors are fully functional.”

Less than a day ago they had plummeted together into the atmosphere of a planet that no longer existed. Sulu’s black eye stood as testament to that conflict, and yet he appeared calm and collected. Jim hoped he himself came across half as well.

“Engineering?” Kirk asked, turning toward the smaller man. Scotty had assumed the engineering station without being asked, his even smaller friend at his side.

Scottish brogue echoed rough and loud. “Specs look fine from here, but I’ve got to get down there to make sure the guts are still where they should be.

I swear if someone’s jostled the warp matrix—!”

“Scotty,” Kirk said. “Can you give me warp power?”

“Aye, for now. Long-term? Ask me in ten minutes and a bottle of scotch.”

Kirk allowed himself a quick, tight nod. “Report to engineering then Mr. Scott, and perhaps we’ll hold off on the alcohol until Nero is dealt with?”

“Aye, sir,” the man answered. “Come on!” he snapped at his companion. The two left the bridge together.

“Bones?”

A pause, and McCoy looked up from treating the old Vulcan. His voice, as usual, was edged with frustration.

“Sickbay’s a warzone, Jim. We got hit pretty hard. Over a dozen injuries. Three of ‘em critical. One’s lost a leg and keeps telling me he’s fine. And Puri’s still dead—if you were wondering.”

Kirk winced. “I don’t expect you to figure out how to cure death, Bones…not yet anyway.”

“You’ll manage,” McCoy snapped back, and for once, the sarcasm made Kirk feel better.

Uhura turned to him from communications, arms folded. “I’ve got scattered transmissions from Earth. Federation command is dark. Civilian chatter’s panicked, fragmented—whatever Nero’s doing, they’re scared.” She paused to take a steadying breath, “And if you’re really in command, I assume you have a plan.”

Kirk met her eyes. No heat, no defensiveness—just honesty. “I’ve got the beginning of one. We need to get moving in the right direction first.”

She studied him, clearly unconvinced—but she didn’t argue. She turned back to her console and said, “very well, Captain.”

Kirk looked ahead at the main viewer. The stars shimmered, unknowing. Somewhere out there, Earth hung in the dark, oblivious to the storm about to break.

Vulnerable. Beautiful.

“Mr. Sulu,” he said. “Set course for Sector 001. Sol system.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Maximum warp.”

Sulu’s fingers danced across the controls. The hum of the engines deepened.

The stars stretched and vanished.

Kirk turned toward the science station. Spock the younger stood there, hands clasped behind his back, his face a careful mask of neutrality. This must not have been easy for him.

"Mr. Spock," Kirk said, keeping his tone crisp but not unfriendly. "Man the science station. Get to work on anything that might give us an edge."

There was a heartbeat of hesitation—so small most would have missed it.

But Jim saw it.

Felt it.

Then Spock inclined his head, precise and controlled. "Yes, Captain."

Jim let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding.

Spock moved towards the console, long fingers flying over the controls with mechanical efficiency. The familiar quiet hum of analysis and sensor sweeps filled the air, grounding Kirk in a way he hadn’t realized he needed.

Beats of another lifetime echoed in Kirk’s tired mind. The effects of the meld on Delta Vega refusing to fade. Whatever else had changed, some things—some things—felt like they could still be counted on.

Kirk settled back in the command chair, gripping the arms lightly, and let out that slow, careful breath.

“Ok , everyone. We’ve got a madman headed towards Earth, wielding a weapon of unimaginable power…We need a way to sneak up on Nero without being blown to bits…I’m open to ideas.”

They stared back at him, warily. The silence stretched on a bit too long…

And then Chekov spun in his seat, eager. “Ve could warp in behind Titan. Use the moon’s bulk to mask our approach. It’s vhat I vould do.”

Spock—young Spock—standing just off the science station, arms folded tightly behind his back. “Titan is a limited option,” he said, tone measured. “Its atmosphere is thin and easily penetrated by high-energy sensors. A clever move, but not a lasting advantage.”

“Then what?” Kirk asked.

The older Spock—Spock Prime—spoke from where he sat near the auxiliary station. His voice, though worn at the edges, carried clearly.

“There is a precedent,” he said. “In my time, we once evaded enemy detection by hiding the Enterprise in the atmosphere of a brown dwarf. The Gorn were a ruthless opponent. We used the dwarf’s magnetic turbulence to mask our presence so we could gain the upper hand.”

“You defeated the Gorn?” Sulu looked impressed.

“We…survived,” the elder equivocated.

Sulu let it go. Bones glared sharply. “The Sol system doesn’t have a brown dwarf.”

“No,” the older Spock acquiesced. “But there is Jupiter.”

There was a beat of silence.

“That could work,” Sulu said, turning toward his console. “The magnetic field is massive. Enough to scramble sensors.”

“Logic dictates that Nero plans to use Jupiter’s gravity to decelerate,” Spock Prime continued, “we can approach from the opposite vector, hidden by the radiation belt. From there, I will beam aboard the Narada and retrieve the red matter before it can be used again.”

“The hell you will!” Bones snapped before Kirk could even open his mouth. “You’re half drowned, exhausted, and one cracked rib away from permanent retirement.”

“I am the only one who can pilot the jellyfish,” Spock Prime replied calmly. “It is not a question of willingness, Doctor. Only capability.”

Kirk opened his mouth, whether to argue or question the odd naming of the ship from the future, but young Spock beat him to it.

“Captain ,” he said—flat, calm, but just sharp enough to make the older man glance at him. “I am in the unique position of being able to be in two places at once. I will beam aboard the Narada. My counterpart can provide me with the necessary information.”

Kirk nodded, jaw stiff and stubborn. “Then I’m going with you,” he announced.

Young Spock raised an eyebrow. “Captain, I must remind you of Regulation 619.3, which prohibits senior officers from—” he caught Kirk’s eye.

A beat. Spock’s jaw tightened. “and you intend to ignore it…”

Kirk grinned. “See? We are getting to know one another!”

McCoy sighed. “All right, great. Who’s gonna command the Enterprise, then? You, old man?”

Spock Prime shook his head. “This ship is too different. The one who commands her must know her.”

Kirk nodded again. “Sulu, you’ll have the con.”

Spock Prime turned slightly in his chair. “I can assist with tactical. I will not interfere with command.”

Kirk nodded. “Then let’s get to it.” He touched the console, “Scotty, time to Sol at warp 9.5?”

Young Spock interjected.

“At standard warp, it would take 17.34 hours to reach Jupiter.”

Scotty scoffed through the com system. “We’ll get that down to fifteen. Maybe less. Probably.”

Kirk could hear the grin in his voice. “Give or take an ion storm.”

Kirk felt the corner of his mouth twitch upward.

This was what he loved—the momentum, the wild ideas, the way everyone brought their best to the table. Even if some of them had their best wrapped in sarcasm.

He hoped it would be enough.

Kirk shifted in the command chair, heart pounding in his chest.
He could feel a dozen pairs of eyes on him—some shocked, some skeptical, all waiting.

Time to put this plan in motion.

He thumbed the shipwide comm.

The soft chime echoed over the bridge, and then across every deck of the Enterprise.

He took a breath.

Steady.

"This is James T. Kirk," he said, voice clear but urgent. "I know this is...unexpected. Due to the personal nature of recent events, acting Captain Spock has temporarily resigned his commission. I have assumed command, in accordance with Starfleet regulations."

The stunned silence deepened.

Somewhere near the helm, someone muttered.

Kirk heard it—but before he could respond, Sulu spoke up over the quiet buzz of disbelief.

"He’s right," Sulu said firmly, standing a little straighter. "Captain Pike made Kirk first officer before he was taken by Nero. That makes him acting captain."

That helped.

The energy shifted.

Just slightly—but enough.

Kirk pushed forward.

“I know that none of us were expecting this, A few minutes ago, I was a cadet. Now I’m sitting in the captain’s chair. Looks like we’re all going to have to grow up a little bit sooner than we expected…”

Spock Prime’s head snapped up in surprise. He felt the eyes of the old Vulcan boring into him.

"Here’s what you need to know. Vulcan is gone. Now, the same madman who committed that horrific atrocity is on his way towards Earth. We are currently in pursuit.

Bones still looked like he might keel over from sheer incredulity.

Kirk caught his eye, gave him the faintest half-smile.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Bones," he said dryly.

McCoy huffed, shaking his head, but said nothing.

Kirk leaned forward, speaking into the comm again.

"We are young. I know that. Hell, most of you weren’t supposed to be here yet. Neither was I. But Nero is headed for Earth. And we are the only thing standing in his way."

He paused just long enough for the weight of that to land.

"I believe in this ship," Kirk continued, voice growing stronger. "I believe in this crew. And I’m not asking you to trust me because of rank or protocol. I’m asking because we don’t have time to second-guess each other. Either we stop Nero—or everything we know, everything we love, is going to be gone."

A beat.

He gripped the arms of the chair, grounding himself.

His voice dropped, full of grim, determined fire.

"Either we’re going down…or they are. Kirk out."

He released the comm.
The background hum of the ship returned—but it was different now.

Sharper. Focused.

And Kirk sat a little taller in the chair, ready.

The Enterprise screamed towards Earth, prepared once again, and for the first time, to give her all in its defense.

And if a ghost of a smile danced across the face of one old Vulcan, no one seemed to notice.

Chapter Text

The next few hours passed in a flurry of activity. Kirk spent most of it getting a feel for the ship and her crew. Given the complete surprise of the Vulcan distress call and the unfortunate timing of Nero’s attack, at launch the Enterprise had left space dock with only about sixty percent of her positions filled, the vast majority of those being cadets in their last year. After their first confrontation with the mad Romulan, their complement had dwindled to less than half of what would have usually been needed to run a fully functioning starship. That wasn’t entirely a bad thing. Many of the missing personnel would have been superfluous in this situation anyway, there was no need for an administrative staff or a fleet of yeoman to attend the senior officers for example. The lack of experienced tactical and weapons teams could present a problem. Also, they had little to no redundancy in pretty much anything. He spent quite a while wrangling shift assignments all while attempting to assure that everyone got as much rest as possible before the battle to come.

It was exhausting.

Kirk barely had time to breathe after ordering the shift rotations. He’d just finished assigning rest cycles and bridge duty—Uhura was staying on for now, Sulu had agreed to take helm rotation with a relief pilot coming in five hours, and Chekov was practically bouncing in his seat, eager to calculate intercept vectors. Even Spock—young Spock—had quietly acknowledged the plan, nodding once before retreating to the science station to compile tactical options. They were moving, finally. They were a crew.

Kirk turned to sink into the captain’s chair again, only to feel a strong yet familiar hand clamp around his bicep.

“Not so fast, Captain,” McCoy growled, somehow making the word ‘Captain’ sound like both an accusation and an admonition.

Kirk blinked at him, half a smirk forming out of sheer habit. “Problem, Bones?”

“Yeah. You,” McCoy snapped, and then turned to the other Spock. “And you.”

Oh. Right. Shit. He tried to think back on the last twenty-four hours. Bones had warned him to be careful, to not let some of his more…unusual…traits and abilities show. There had been so much going on, he honestly was having a hard time remembering where he was supposed to have been hit. Bones must be worried sick.

Well, nothing new there.

Spock Prime raised an eyebrow in that maddeningly serene way. Kirk could already see where this was going.

“Look, I appreciate the concern—”

“I don’t give a damn about appreciation. I’m the chief medical officer on this ship, Jim, and I don’t need your permission to haul your ass to Sickbay if I think you’re about to drop where you stand.” The physician’s words said one thing but his thunderous glare conveyed something entirely different. As if his life weren’t already complicated enough.

“I’m fine—”

“You’re bruised, bleeding, dehydrated, and running on what? Two hours of sleep and pure adrenaline? You were nearly killed by romulans and a giant snow monster. A normal person would have fallen over by now”

Kirk choked. And Bones thought Jim was bad at keeping secrets! “I’m ok,” Kirk equivocated, “I actually got a fair bit of rest, six hours at least, right, Spock?”

The old Vulcan nodded. “Six point seven eight, to be precise.”

“See Bones? I’m fine.”

“Don’t test me.”

Kirk looked to Spock Prime for backup, but the older Vulcan merely tilted his head in vague amusement. Traitor.

McCoy crossed his arms. “We’ve got twelve hours, and for once we’re not actively being shot at. So unless you're keen on having a spectacular breakdown mid-rescue-op, you’re both coming with me and getting a full medical eval, fluids, and a few damn hours in a biobed. That’s not a suggestion.”

Ok. That was fair.

Kirk opened his mouth to protest out of pure habit. McCoy held up a hypospray, his finger already on the trigger.

“Don’t make me use this.”

It was a familiar dance. They both knew that dose would have very little effect, if any. Kirk sighed and lifted his hands in mock surrender. “Fine. Fine! You win. I’ll come quietly.”

McCoy gave a satisfied grunt, like a man who had wrestled a bear and won. “Good. I’ll have Nurse Chapel prep the beds. And don’t think I won’t sedate you anyway if you try to sneak out early.”

Kirk glanced toward Spock Prime as they started toward the turbolift. “Was your Bones this big of a pain in the ass?”

Spock Prime’s eyes twinkled faintly. “Only when he cared deeply.”

McCoy snorted. “Don’t get sentimental on me, old man.”

Kirk grinned despite himself. “Careful, Bones. I think he likes you.”

“At least someone does. Now march.

The turbolift doors whispered shut behind them as McCoy herded Spock Prime toward Sickbay like a cranky shepherd with a particularly dignified sheep. Kirk followed at a slower pace, watching the two men—the doctor grumbling under his breath, the Vulcan silent, but pale and clearly fading.

“You’re one breath away from falling over again,” McCoy snapped. “And don’t try that ‘Vulcans don’t faint’ nonsense—I watched you do it.”

The elder Spock lifted an eyebrow. “I prefer to think of it as a temporary loss of vertical stability.”

Clearly, Vulcan sass was a trans-universal constant.

“Call it whatever you want, you’re getting scanned. You got a pulse?”

Kirk cracked a smile despite himself.

The older Vulcan turned his head slightly as he walked. “Doctor, I have survived Romulan torture, a near-drowning, a collapsing planet, two melds, and the past twelve hours of temporal anomalies. I assure you, I still possess a pulse.”

“Great,” McCoy muttered. “Let’s see if it’s in the right damn place.”

Sickbay loomed ahead, chaotic and humming with triage. Beds were full. Med techs moved briskly between patients. The wounded lay still under the soft glow of diagnostic readouts. Kirk caught a glimpse of a security officer getting a bone-knitting pass over a shattered femur and a young ensign sitting quietly as a nurse whispered to her, a dermal regenerator smoothing the burn on her cheek.

They passed one of the beds where Puri’s body lay under a sterile sheet.

McCoy slowed there, just for a second. His voice was quieter when he spoke again. “He was a good man, Jim. An exceptional doctor. Sure would have been nice to have the help right now.”

Kirk swallowed the lump in his throat. “You’ll manage, Bones.”

McCoy said nothing, but the corner of his mouth twitched before he moved on.

Spock Prime was already attempting to sit up the moment they got him on a bed. McCoy shoved him back down.

Kirk left them to it, trusting Bones to do what needed doing.

Jim appropriated one of the few empty biobeds, discreetly shutting down its monitoring features as always. The situation was precarious enough as it was.

**********

Doctor McCoy had barreled into sickbay like a storm in a lab coat, tugging both Jim and Spock behind him like particularly disobedient luggage.

“Alright, that’s enough heroics for one day,” he barked, shoving the door panel open. “You, Mister High-and-Mighty Future Vulcan—sit. And you,” he shot a glare at Jim, “shut up and let me check you over before you start any more arguments.”

Spock raised a brow but complied without protest, easing himself down onto the nearest biobed with the dignified slowness of someone whose body was reminding him of every second spent skirting the edge of disaster.

McCoy, meanwhile, herded Jim toward another bed like a sheepdog with a vendetta.

“Sit down, dumbass,” the doctor snarled.

“Bones, I said I’m fine—”

“You say a lot of things, none of them backed by actual medical evidence,” McCoy snapped.

“Now sit your stubborn ass down and try not to flirt with death for five goddamn minutes.”

Jim grinned weakly as he perched on the edge of the biobed. “Flirting’s mutual, Doc. She keeps buying me drinks.”

But having known Jim Kirk better than anyone, albeit a different version of him, Spock could see it—there was a tightness around the boy’s mouth, a twitch of unease in his shoulders. He didn’t want to be here. Not in sickbay, and not under scrutiny, and not for the usual reasons.

Kirk was hiding something.

Spock watched carefully as McCoy began his exam. At first glance, Kirk looked remarkably intact—too intact. The contusion beneath his eye, which had been deep purple and swollen just the previous evening, had faded to the yellowed hue of an injury several days into healing. Curious.

And frostbite—Spock remembered the cold, the vicious winds across Delta Vega’s icy plains, and the way the young captain had trembled from it, his finer movements blunted by what Spock had assumed was injury to the tissue. Yet when McCoy checked his fingers and toes, there was no visible damage. No necrosis, no swelling, not even blistering. Nothing.

Spock’s gaze narrowed.

More curiously, McCoy was doing everything manually—running his tricorder, taking visual checks—but he hadn’t activated the biobed’s sensor suite. Kirk sat on top of a diagnostic tool designed to capture everything from elevated stress hormones to neural misfiring, and it was utterly still. Dormant.

The last straw was the moment when Nurse Chapel leaned in to offer assistance, and McCoy angled his tricorder sharply away from her line of sight, muttering something about “standard readings.” Chapel gave him a puzzled look but obeyed. McCoy shot a glance at Spock, saw that he was watching, and scowled harder.

Not his usual scowl, something more brittle.

Suspicion flickered across Spock’s mind. There was something else about this Jim that didn’t quite match the one he had known—something more than the expected divergence of a younger man thrust too soon into command.

Could this be another one of the timeline’s fractures? A ripple of cause and effect that ran deeper than mere circumstance?

He could not know, not yet. But the boy’s body was healing too fast. His pain responses didn’t match the injuries he should have sustained. The doctor's evasiveness only confirmed it—there was more going on than anyone was saying.

McCoy muttered a final curse under his breath, patted Jim none-too-gently on the shoulder, and turned back to Spock.

“Now it’s your turn, Mister Time Traveler. Don’t go dying on me either. I’m fresh out of patience.”
And Spock Prime, still watching Kirk out of the corner of his eye, lay back on the biobed without a word.

After a brief examination, the good doctor pronounced Spock, “Remarkably healthy for a traumatized 150 year old from the future.” McCoy did point out the cracked rib that Nero had gifted Spock when the Romulan had intercepted him. Muttering something about not knowing where they were keeping the damn osteoregeneator, he ordered Spock to “Sit tight.”

Ah, the doctor always did know how to turn a phrase.

Spock indicated that he intended to meditate, and the strange, dark-eyed version of his old friend left him to it.

After a short detour around the med bay, McCoy returned to the young Captain. He leaned in and began to converse. Spock heard the low murmur of the doctor’s voice—sharper now, more anxious than irritable. Spock smiled, even his McCoy often forgot about the true sensitivity of Vulcan hearing. This one spoke quietly, just out of Spock’s line of sight. Fortunately or unfortunately, he did not speak quite quietly enough.

Spock listened.

Their tones had shifted. Gone was the usual back-and-forth ribbing. This was quiet, careful.

And coded.

“I told you to take it easy,” McCoy hissed under his breath. “If you keep healing like this out in the open, someone’s gonna start asking the wrong kind of questions.”

Long years of habit caused one sharp eyebrow to rise. This was not the doctor’s normal henpecking.

“I have been careful,” Jim whispered back, just as low. “No one’s said anything.”

“Yet. That bruising should’ve taken a week to fade. It’s been twelve hours, maybe. You think Chapel didn’t notice?”

There was a pause. Then Jim, more quietly: “You erased the scans.”

“Damn right I did,” McCoy snapped. “But I can’t cover for you forever, kid.”

Spock didn’t move, didn’t give the slightest indication he was listening—but he was. Every word. Every nuance.

“I’m telling you, Bones,” Jim said, trying to sound light, but Spock could hear the tightness underneath. “Nobody’s noticed. Nobody knows.”

“Yeah? Well I know. And if anyone finds out—”
McCoy cut himself off, voice dropping to a near-growl. “You know what the regs say about augments. The second this hits Command, you’re out. No hearing, no defense. Out.”

Another pause. Then Jim, equally heated, hissed, “You know it’s not my fault!”

“I know that kid, god knows I do. It ain’t fair neither, but be both also know that won’t make a damn bit of difference.”

“They won’t find out. You won’t let them.”

Silence. Then a heavy exhale. “Damn it, Jim.”

Spock closed his eyes for the briefest second.

There it was.

The abnormal healing. The absence of frostbite.

The muted sensor readings. The guarded tricorder, the biobed mysteriously inactive.

Genetic manipulation.

It fit, horribly and perfectly. And when Spock recalled McCoy’s earlier anger, his guarded intensity—not just concern for a friend, but panic over a secret—it all aligned. In his own timeline, Kirk had been a survivor of Tarsus IV. That much remained. But here, Kodos had gone further.

As if sexual abuse weren’t enough.

Spock could see the shape of it now: an experiment, a madman’s attempt to create the “perfect being,” using a terrified thirteen-year-old boy as his template.

It explained far too much.

When McCoy finally turned back to him, irritation back on the surface, Spock said nothing. He simply lay still, arms crossed, mind quietly reeling.

He had thought this Kirk brave. Now he knew he was something else entirely.

Survivor. Augment. Fugitive from the truth.

And still—still—a Starfleet captain.

As McCoy finally stepped away from Kirk and rounded on Spock Prime with his usual bark of frustration, Spock remained still on the biobed, hands folded, letting the doctor fuss over cracked ribs and strained tissue with the kind of grumbling precision Spock had always associated with affection poorly disguised as outrage.

“Hold still, damn it. You Vulcans always think a collapsed lung is just a minor inconvenience.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “I believe you are exaggerating, Doctor. I have never—”

He was interrupted. A sound behind McCoy drew his attention. A clatter of utensils. A sharp intake of breath.

Nurse Chapel had returned—this timeline’s Christine, younger, but with the same kind eyes Spock remembered— had approached Jim with a small tray.

Something light, broth perhaps. Kirk’s shoulders immediately went rigid, his jaw tightening as she came closer.

"Captain," she said gently, "you should try to eat something."

And then—

Kirk flinched.

The tray clattered to the floor. Jim's eyes went wide, unfocused. For a heartbeat he stared at Chapel like she'd grown a second head. Then, with a strangled noise—something between a gasp and a startled curse—he recoiled sharply and fell right off the biobed, hitting the ground with a graceless thud.

“Goddammit!” McCoy snapped, whirling around.
“What the hell is wrong with you now?”

Jim sat up on the floor, visibly shaken. His breath came fast, shallow. He looked from Chapel to the elder as though trying to reconcile two different realities.

“I—” he stammered. “That was... you gave me soup.”

Chapel blinked. “I—I what?”

“You tried to give him soup. You—” He pointed at Spock. “There was this room, and you—you were in it—except it wasn’t you. And he looked like hell. And I—felt it.”

He turned, slowly, to look at Spock Prime, eyes wide with alarm. The elder Vulcan sighed.

McCoy froze. Slowly, he pivoted back toward Spock, his face darkening with fury.

“What the hell did you do to him, you heartless green-blooded bastard?!”

Spock sighed. He briefly wished that he were with his own McCoy, a man with whom he would have felt comfortable throwing out a playful comment about Spock’s parents’ marital status at the time of his birth, or perhaps a quip about the obvious existence of the Vulcan cardiovascular organ…

But that man, and that world, were long gone.

“Dr. McCoy, please see to the captain.” He met the stranger’s glare with calm resolve.

“Then, we shall talk.”

Chapter Text

Jim fidgeted.

He sat, legs swinging, heart pounding, his lungs drawing in air that was tinged faintly with the smell of antiseptics and burnt wiring. He hated being here. Bones had practically dragged him down from the bridge by the collar, shoving him in ahead of the older Vulcan and barking orders like a man on a mission. McCoy had pointed to the other bed and snapped at Spock Prime— “Sit. Don’t move. I’ll deal with this idiot first”—before rounding on Jim with a look that said don’t test me.

They really didn’t have time for this.

“Bones, come on,” he’d said, flashing that signature grin. “I’ve been through worse and looked better doing it.”

“Don’t make me sedate you,” McCoy growled, snatching up his tricorder and flipping it open.

Jim still smiled, but it was thinner now, fragile around the edges. Jim endured his scrutiny, willing his heart to slow and his body to stay relaxed. It was a trick he’d learned long ago, although whether it was due to Kodos’s tinkering or just a natural talent, Jim didn’t know.

At least it was useful.

Truth was, he didn’t want to be here. The biobed’s readings were off, as usual. He could fool a stethoscope or a heart rate monitor but the more sophisticated sensors embedded in the bunk beneath him could easily reveal the truth. Abnormal metabolic rate, exceptional nerve conduction, near perfect gas exchange in lungs that boasted almost 30% more surface area…and that was just the simple stuff.

Fuck Kodos. If they managed to survive the next twenty-four hours Jim was going to corner that old Vulcan and learn everything he knew about a certain “Antonin Karridian.” If Kodos was alive…

Well, he’d burn that bridge when he came to it…if he came to it.

He could see McCoy purposely not activating certain scans, keeping the sensors from logging vitals. Bones was hunched over the tricorder like a gambler shielding a bad hand, hiding the display even from Chapel. Jim’s black eye—which had been deep purple and tender to the touch just last night in that frozen hellscape—had faded like it was a week old. The frostbite? Gone. Skin smooth, unmarred. It wasn’t right. He knew it. Bones knew it. And they both knew why.

“You’re not hiding it well,” McCoy muttered under his breath, checking Jim’s fingers one more time.

“No one’s said anything,” Jim whispered back.

“Yet,” Bones snapped. “All it takes is one scan. One slip.”

Jim frowned. “You think I want this?”

“No,” Bones said, voice low. “I think you survived something no one should’ve had to, and now I’m stuck covering your ass every time your cells decide to show off.”

That stung. Even if it was true.

He sat quietly as Bones examined the Vulcan

His respite was short lived. McCoy gave him that one look—half frustration, half helpless worry—and began berating Jim once more.

It was an argument they’d had dozens of times, ever since Bones had discovered his secret. He’d caught Jim hacking into the medical records his first week at the academy and it had all come out.

He’d thought he had been busted, that his starfleet career would have been ended in less than a week, but the older man had just grumbled and then, to Jim’s utter shock, had offered to help.

Jim still wasn’t sure why.

After delivering his standard dressing down, bones grabbed the osteoregeneator and turned back to Spock.

Good. Maybe he could get out of here now.

Dutifully planning his escape route, he didn’t notice the nurse approaching.

“Captain?”

He looked up. A woman stood near him—mid to late twenties, blonde, with a kind smile and gentle eyes. She was holding a small tray with a bowl of broth.

“I’m Nurse Chapel. You should eat something.”

Jim’s brain short-circuited.

Again.

He blinked.

She wasn’t the problem—it was him. Or… not him. Not just him.

The moment her voice hit his ears, a wave of something washed over him. A memory that wasn’t his. Not exactly. The edges blurred, but it was real—vivid. He remembered her. Not from their reality. From the other Spock’s.
Christine Chapel. Years of service. Dedication. Her soft voice trying to offer comfort. Soup. Always soup. She had tried to care for Spock in a moment of desperate vulnerability, during…during something primal, something dangerous.

The term Pon farr floated through his mind searching for something to latch on to.

And Spock? Spock had been polite. But distant. Cold. Unmoved. His heart—his need—had been focused elsewhere.

Jim saw it all in a flash, like double vision—Spock in the heat of pon farr, and a captain entering the room, speaking softly, reaching out to him like—

Jim jolted like he’d been shocked.

Wait. Wait.

They were together. Not just close. Not just bonded, in the casual Vulcan way he’d read about. They were together together.

Oh Shit.

The arousal wasn’t even his, but it surged through him, wild and aching. He flushed hard, sweat prickling at the back of his neck. His skin felt too tight. He was hot and embarrassed and—dear God, was he jealous?

His legs twitched. His balance wavered.

He hit the floor of Sickbay with a loud thump.

“For the love of— Jim!” McCoy spun. “What now?!”

Jim sat on the floor, face red, staring up at Spock Prime with something between awe, alarm, and accusation.

He tried to explain…and still wasn’t sure if he had managed to convey what he had seen with any sort of coherency.

“What the hell was that?” he asked the second he got his breath back.

McCoy’s head whipped around to Spock Prime.

“Okay, no. No more of this Vulcan freaky mind-meld crap,” he bellowed. “What the hell did you do to him, you heartless green-blooded bastard?!”?”

Spock Prime met his gaze calmly, though his eyes flirted to Jim, visibly concerned.

“Doctor,” he said evenly, “see to your captain. Then we shall talk.”

Jim endured several more minutes of Bones fussing over him. At one point he moved as if to stand but one look from McCoy dissuaded him.

Jim sat on the floor of Sickbay, back against the cool wall, one hand braced behind him and the other curled in the fabric of his uniform over his chest. His breathing came fast and shallow.

Sweat clung to his skin. He felt like he’d just run a marathon through a minefield of other people’s feelings.

He was well practiced at compartmentalization of his own baggage, goodness knows he had enough of it…but this was different. These memories did not belong to him.

He couldn’t parse what was his and what wasn’t.

There was too much.

Too much.

Decades of yearning—longing buried so deep it had worn smooth with time. Fear, pressed like a bruise behind his ribs. Hope, fragile as glass and just as dangerous. The echo of something intimate, deeper than thought, more instinct than memory: a bond—not his. But inside him now, its outline branded into his mind like a phantom limb.

There was love. Fierce. Unyielding. Enduring.
And loss.

A face—his own, but older. Softer. Kind. Pressed against glass. Eyes that seemed to glow a warm amber, not the cold cerulean he was used to. Spock’s hand mirrored against it. My friend. A farewell. A sacrifice. The knowledge that he would die, but the other would live—and that was enough. That had to be enough.

Then—whales?

Jim blinked. “Whales?”

He whispered it aloud like a curse, voice cracking under the strain.

What was this?

He felt violated. Humbled. Awestruck. Like he’d read a private letter meant for someone else and found his name scrawled across the margins, again and again. Like he’d seen the truth of a man stripped raw and burning with something to which Jim might never be able to give words.

Bones was saying something—his voice angry and scared—but Jim barely registered it. He was still staring at Spock Prime. At the slight downturn of his mouth, the storm of old grief in his eyes.

The room tilted. Jim swallowed hard.

“You were his,” he murmured, disoriented, unsure whether he was accusing or just… stating the truth. “Weren’t you.”

He wasn’t even sure who he meant.

“Yes, Jim. He and I…” the elder paused to gather his thoughts. “We met while I served under Captain Pike. Several years later I became first officer on this very ship. Captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise…We were comrades only. We experienced many things together, both wondrous and terrible.”

“But,” Jim interjected, struggling to understand,” I saw…” the young man flushed, not quite certain how to say it.

“Many years passed before we decided to bond.”

“WHAT?!” shrieked McCoy. “You were MARRIED?!?!”

“Yes, doctor, in all ways that mattered.”

Jim gaped at the older man. He didn’t know if he wanted to run or stay.

Spock Prime’s expression softened with deep remorse. He stepped forward, his posture composed but his voice thick with regret.

“I am sorry, young one,” he said gently, to Jim. “I never intended for you to see what was not yours to carry. Had I understood the potential… had I known the resonance would imprint so deeply, I would never have initiated the meld.”

That word—meld—snapped McCoy’s head around like he’d been struck.

“The what?”

Jim flinched at the sharpness in Bones’ voice.

He was still sitting on the floor, vision swimming, his hand now cradling his forehead like he could press the thoughts into order by force. They weren’t his. They weren’t his. But they felt like his. The grief. The bond. Death. Life.

Whalesong.

How…strange.

Spock Prime inclined his head solemnly. “A mind meld, Doctor. On Delta Vega. Your Jim was hesitant but he consented. I believed it was the only way to convey the threat of Nero in time to make a difference.”

“You melded with him?” McCoy growled. “Without explaining what it would do to him? Are you out of your damn Vulcan mind?”

“It was a desperate situation,” Spock said quietly. “In fact it remains so.”

“He’s right, Bones,” Kirk breathed. “I wouldn’t have believed him otherwise.”

“Still don’t make it right,” the doctor huffed.

Jim opened his mouth but was having trouble figuring out what to say. The words kept changing before they left his tongue. A moment ago, he’d been afraid. Now he was… curious.

Something in his chest ached with a need he didn’t recognize, a need that didn’t belong to him—and yet, it did. A depth of devotion he hadn’t realized he was capable of. It terrified him.

He shook his head and muttered, “They’re not mine. These thoughts. These feelings—they’re not—”

He stopped, voice breaking. His hand curled into a fist against the floor.

“I don’t know what’s me anymore.”

Spock Prime stepped forward again, but this time cautiously, like approaching a wounded animal.

“They will fade,” he said. “Not entirely, but enough for you to distinguish what is yours from what was mine. In time, your mind will adapt. Vulcan minds are trained for this. Human minds are… more intuitive. You will learn to feel the difference.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

McCoy snapped, moving between them, protective and fuming. “You should’ve told someone what you did—before he started reliving your soap opera of a life!”

Spock Prime bowed his head. “You are correct. It’s possible that I erred. Only time will tell. As for now, I ask only this: look after him. Once the danger is passed, I will answer your questions, Doctor. All of them.”

He glanced once more at Jim, eyes softening.
“First, he must rest.”

Jim didn’t argue. He didn’t have the strength to. He just closed his eyes and let the weight of the borrowed memories press him back into the wall.

McCoy’s voice rose sharply. “Dammit, Jim, look at me—don’t you dare shut down on me now!”

But Jim wasn’t shutting down. If anything, his mind was overheating. He could feel it—heart racing, pulse pounding in his ears like warp engines, breath coming too fast. His vision swam, and he could sense Spock Prime’s memories pressing in, layer upon layer, old pain, love, logic, fury, death—too much, all of it, so much.

His hand shot out, gripping McCoy’s arm with unexpected strength.

“Sedate me,” Jim said, teeth clenched.

“What?” McCoy blinked, stunned. “What the hell are you talking about? You hate it when I do that!”

“Sedate me,” Jim repeated, more forcefully now. “Right now, Bones. We don’t have time for me to sort this out—this is the fastest way.”

“I agree,” Spock offered. “His mind needs to process the excess, and consciousness will only inhibit that process.”

McCoy hesitated, still caught between fury and fear, but Jim’s grip didn’t waver. “Do it,” Jim ordered, eyes locked on his friend. “Please.”

Slowly, reluctantly, McCoy reached for a hypospray. “Goddammit, kid…”

Jim turned to Spock Prime, trying to focus through the static crowding his mind. “Is there… is there anything you can do? To help stop this?”

McCoy opened his mouth to object again, but Jim snapped, “Let him speak.”

Spock Prime stepped forward, calm but grave.

“The sedative should help reduce the neurological feedback. It may lessen the resonance. Temporarily.”

McCoy’s jaw tightened, but he loaded the hypo anyway, thumb hovering over the release.

Before he could deliver the medication, Jim twitched violently, his back arched. His body seized, muscles locking tight, eyes rolling back.

“Now!” Spock barked.

McCoy slammed the hypo to Jim’s neck and depressed the trigger with a hiss of air.

Jim’s limbs quivered once—twice—then went limp. His head lolled to the side, eyes fluttering shut, breath softening.

The silence that followed was awful.

McCoy looked down at the unconscious form of his captain, fury and grief twisting across his face. “You better have a plan, Spock,” he menaced, voice low.

Spock Prime stood perfectly still beside him, gaze on the boy sprawled across the floor.

“I believe,” he said quietly, “that we are going to need one.”

And the last thought Jim Kirk had, as the world spiraled down into quiet black, was:

Those two are gonna have to figure this out together.

God help them.

Chapter Text

The elder Spock moved with uncharacteristic gentleness, his long fingers sliding beneath Jim’s limp shoulders and knees, as if he were holding a very young child. He lifted the younger man with ease, cradling him as if he were something delicate, irreplaceable. The Vulcan’s expression was unreadable as he bore the captain across sickbay and laid him with the utmost care upon the biobed.

Jim didn’t stir.

Spock paused, brushing a stray lock of hair back from Jim’s forehead. “Rest now, Jim,” he murmured, barely above a whisper.

He turned to McCoy. “Doctor. How long will the sedation last?”

McCoy crossed his arms, posture stiff, voice defensive. “I gave him enough to knock out an elephant.”

Spock raised one brow. “Indeed. And how long should it last on someone with the captain’s unique physiology?”

McCoy stiffened further. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Doctor,” Spock addressed him quietly, “Vulcan hearing is quite acute. I also possess no small amount of deductive reasoning. While it was understandable, given the stressfulness of the situation, you were rather careless in your privacy protocols. Even without telepathic aid, I inferred a great deal.”

McCoy’s face twitched, then fell. He let out a long sigh. The doctor’s features tried to form an expression of guilt or something, but the man was likely too tired to emote properly.

“About thirty minutes,” the doctor admitted, glancing uneasily toward the biobed. “If we’re lucky.”

Spock inclined his head. “Then I suggest we retire to a location less conspicuous. It is time we were completely honest with one another.”

McCoy gave a rough snort. “Fine by me.”

He turned on his heel and stomped toward his office, the doors hissing open with his passage. Spock followed silently, the doors closing behind him, sealing them both inside with the weight of everything unspoken.

************

McCoy’s heart had twisted as he had watched Spock Prime gather Jim into his arms with a tenderness that Bones would never have believed a Vulcan capable. It wasn’t fair—how calm he was, how gentle, how certain. Like he knew this Jim wasn’t the same, but it didn’t matter. Like he loved him anyway. That was the part that stung the most.

“Dammit,” McCoy had muttered under his breath, as he followed Spock’s movements with wary eyes.

Spock had laid Jim into the biobed like he was tucking in a child, as if he’d done it dozens of times before. Probably had. He had smoothed the kid’s hair back, whispered something McCoy couldn’t hear—and didn’t want to.

The Vulcan straightened, gaze flicking to him with that unnerving calm. He knew, somehow, the damn bastard had figured out Jim’s most closely guarded secret. Damn Vulcan hearing. Damn Bones’ own inability to remain silent when there was a chance someone might overhear…

Still, no use cryin over spilt milk, as his mama used to say.

McCoy scowled, hating how reasonable the time traveler sounded as he suggested they reconvene in the doctor’s private office. “Fine by me,” he had snapped, and spun on his heel. He had stormed into his office, the doors hissing open and closed behind him with a quiet thwump.

Thirty minutes. They had thirty minutes to sort through a lifetime of secrets—and not just Jim’s.

And the clock was ticking.

McCoy filled the elder Spock in about Jim’s…issues. The good doctor still wasn’t sure what had been done to him exactly, just that there had been enhancements. Bones had been reluctant to share his findings, but he really didn’t have much choice.

McCoy glanced at the chronometer on his office wall. In a little more than eleven hours they were expected to report to battle stations. Eleven hours to prepare before the next hellstorm began. It was enough time for the effects of one drink to fade—and maybe, if the gods were generous, enough time to make sense of at least a little of this.

Enough to matter anyway.

He pulled the bottle from the bottom drawer of his desk. Real bourbon. From Earth. As much as Jim teased him, it was a luxury he rarely indulged in outside of truly dire moments. He poured himself a finger, considered it for a beat, then raised an eyebrow at the Vulcan still standing silently across from him.

“Drink?” he asked, holding up the glass.

Spock Prime shook his head once. “No, thank you, Doctor.”

Of course not. McCoy grunted and took a slow sip, letting the burn do what it could for his nerves.

The Vulcan looked… dignified, sure. He had the same posture, the same crisp presence as the Spock McCoy had only recently met. A doctor had to know how to read people, to see beneath the surface and get at the real motivations. Mccoy had the distinct feeling that this Vulcan’s placid expression contained multitudes. Something different. This Spock had the weight of decades behind his eyes. He carried it like armor, or maybe like a scar. That maddening Vulcan calm was still there—but the arrogance… it wasn’t gone, exactly. Just tempered. Like it had been carved down by grief, time, and hard-earned humility.

It made the young doctor shiver the slightest bit despite himself.

One thing the older man didn’t bother to hide, something McCoy had noticed the moment this Spock had followed the now acting captain onto the bridge. Despite looking like a half drowned barn cat clinging onto the very last gasp of its nine lives, Bones could tell that he cared—clearly, painfully—for Jim. No one had spoken it outright, of course not. But it was there in every look, every hesitation, every carefully worded answer.

The kind of care that went beyond logic.

Well. Would wonders never cease.

He took another sip of his drink, then set the glass down and met Spock’s gaze squarely.

“All right,” he said. “Cards on the table, old man.”

Spock Prime folded his hands behind his back again, standing with a military stillness that didn’t quite mask the weight in his voice.

“As I explained earlier,” he began, “I am from another timeline—one that exists one hundred and thirty-eight years in your future.”

McCoy didn’t move, didn’t blink. Just stared, jaw tight, eyes locked on the Vulcan like he was daring him to go on.

Spock continued, his tone even. “In that timeline, the Romulan sun went supernova. Despite our efforts, the Empire refused to act in time. I attempted to contain the supernova using red matter—a volatile substance capable of creating a singularity. I failed to prevent the destruction of Romulus.”

He paused. Just for a moment. McCoy nodded to encourage him to continue.

“Nero, a Romulan miner who had lost everything in the destruction, blamed me personally. He pursued me, and we were both caught in the gravitational field of the singularity. It… transported us. Through space. And time.”

McCoy’s brow furrowed, but he still didn’t speak.

“When Nero arrived in your timeline, he attacked the USS Kelvin. Jim’s father sacrificed himself so that much of the crew as well as his wife and newborn son could escape.” A nod toward the silent biobed outside the office. “That was the first fracture.”

Spock drew a breath—not for necessity, but clarity.

“My ship followed twenty-five years later. By then, Nero had already wrought tremendous damage. I attempted to limit further divergence, but it became clear: the timeline had already shifted—radically. More than I expected. And the effects…”

He trailed off, his gaze returning briefly toward the door separating them from Jim.

“…were not distributed evenly. They seem to have… concentrated… on the life of James T. Kirk.”

McCoy’s mouth tightened. “What the hell does that mean?”

Spock looked back to him. Calm. Haunted. Certain.

“It means, Doctor… that something—perhaps the universe itself—has conspired to change the very course of Jim Kirk’s existence.”

McCoy leaned against the edge of his desk, cradling his bourbon glass like it was the only stable thing left in the room. “Alright,” he said slowly, voice taut. “What’s so different about this Jim?”

Spock Prime did not hesitate.

“There are, as current theory suggests, a multitude of universes—perhaps infinite. Each branching off from decisions, accidents, quantum fluctuations. The exact number which might exist exist is… impossible to calculate.”

He looked at McCoy steadily, hands still folded behind his back. “And yet, in my experience, certain things are constant. Fixed points. Jim Kirk, for instance, is—was—a cornerstone of Starfleet’s future. Of peace. Exploration. He was meant to be—”

“Hold on,” McCoy cut in, frowning. “You mean to tell me that coming back, popping into our time like a ghost from Christmas future, didn’t just overwrite your own timeline? That this is all just… a continuation?”

Spock inclined his head. “If that had happened , if my timeline had been superseded, that would have created a temporal paradox. A violation of causal logic. Certain events had to occur in the original timeline for me to arrive in this place and moment. My existence here is contingent on those events having taken place. Therefore, the logical conclusion is this: the timeline from which I originate still exists—parallel to this one.”

McCoy blinked, momentarily thrown. “So you’re saying… your universe didn’t vanish. It’s still out there, somewhere.”

“Correct.”

“Parallel.” McCoy grunted. “Christ. So we’re just… branches off a tree.”

Spock nodded once. “Precisely. And this branch… has apparently diverged significantly. Especially in regards to the life of your captain.”

He didn’t say it, but McCoy could hear the implication anyway. Logically sound as it was, Spock prime was desperately holding ont the idea that his timeline continued…

Oh. Likely because he hoped to be able to see his Jim again…Remarkably sentimental.

Spock Prime remained standing as if he were a statue, hands still hidden behind him.—Briefly, McCoy came to recognize that there existed a, subtle nuance in the Vulcan’s face. This serenity had layers. Beneath it was something deeper. Something weary. Something sad.

“In my timeline,” Spock said carefully, “your captain and I were… more than colleagues. More than friends. We were bondmates.”

And there it was. McCoy had guessed in the other room but this was confirmation.

McCoy arched an eyebrow, but said nothing, swirling the last of his bourbon.

Spock continued. “There is a Vulcan concept—thy’la. It predates Surak’s teachings and survives only in the most ancient oral traditions. Thy’la translates roughly to friend, brother, lover. A soul-bondmate. It is extraordinarily rare, and in some circles believed to be mere mythology. The bond is said to be unbreakable. Not even by death. This was what I and my bondmate were fortunate enough to share.”

Bones snorted. “Okay, that’s real poetic and all, but what the hell does this high-falutin’ esoteric philosophy have to do with Jim’s condition?”

A flicker of something passed through Spock’s eyes. Amusement, perhaps. Or exasperation—possibly both.

“Doctor,” he said, “while the Jim I once bonded with is long gone, this Jim—your Jim—is very much alive. And that fact alone presents complications.”

He took a measured breath, voice softening.

“Not much is known about the thy’la bond in any universe. But if it can endure death, logic suggests it might also survive something as… unconventional as a fractured timeline. And your captain—this timeline’s Jim Kirk—is genetically modified in ways I can only begin to hypothesize. It is possible that the alterations to Jim’s body have rendered him no longer psi-null. His mind may have instinctively attempted to re-form the bond when exposed to mine.”

McCoy’s brows knit together. “You think Jim tried to bond with you? Just from the meld?”

“Inadvertently,” Spock confirmed. “My own bond formed in a similar fashion, spontaneously during a period of exceptional stress. I had shared my mind with my captain on several occasions and there had been no establishment of our bond. Even after it occurred, Jim and I were either unable or unwilling to acknowledge the existence of that bond for many years. Our bodies knew what our minds could not admit, however. The bond was stable, indeed useful at times, but subtle. It caused little trouble until we were forced to separate...” McCoy didn’t press. It was obviously a painful memory.

Spock continued, “Unfortunately for the younger captain the trauma he experienced—particularly from a memory I did not mean to pass on—interrupted the process. He is now in a state of limbo. A half-formed bond is… dangerous. It destabilizes the mind. Especially a human one.”

Bones muttered, “Hell of a thing.”

Spock inclined his head. “Indeed. That is why I believe we must speak with this universe’s Spock. There is no time to allow this wound to heal naturally. And only a Spock, Jim’s thy’ala —either myself or my counterpart—can complete that bond.”

He hesitated, just for a moment. “I would volunteer, of course. But I am uncertain how my preexisting connection to the Jim of my own universe might interfere. It may… confuse the bond. Possibly even harm your Jim further.”

McCoy ran a hand down his face. “So… let me get this straight. In order to save Earth, Jim has to get mind-married to one of you?”

He paused, then sighed dramatically, flopping back into his chair.

“Jesus, I hate Vulcan mind nonsense.”

McCoy stared hard at the Vulcan across from him, still trying to wrap his head around the whole damn thing. His glass clinked softly against the desk as he set it down, then crossed his arms, jaw tight.

“Does Jim have any say in this?” he asked, voice flat.

Spock Prime inclined his head with a calm that somehow only made Bones angrier. “Of course. It is his mind, his life. Consent is paramount in all matters concerning a bond.”

McCoy snorted, already knowing the answer to the next question. “And knowing Jim the way you do… the way I do… do you really think he’d say no? That he’d choose anything but the path that gives us the best chance of stopping Nero, no matter the cost to himself?”

Spock Prime didn’t answer right away. He didn’t have to.

McCoy swore under his breath, just a whisper. His eyes dropped to the wall beside them as if he could see through to the unconscious kid on the other side. His shoulders slumped.

“Damn it, Jim…” he muttered, then pushed up from his seat and crossed to the desk. He slapped the wall comm panel.

“Computer,” he said, voice brisk and brittle, “locate Commander Spock.”

The reply came a moment later, sharp and emotionless: “Commander Spock is in the primary transporter bay.”

“Tell him to report to sickbay. Now. He’s gonna want to hear this.”

A beat later, a voice—calm, precise, unmistakably younger—answered.

“Acknowledged, Doctor. I am on my way.”

Before McCoy could close the comm link, a screech of alarm rang out. The soft, understated whine of the biobed sensors monitoring Kirk suddenly spiked into a keening wail. Warning lights flared to life, casting pulsing shadows across the office wall.

McCoy swore again and turned toward the door in a rush, but Spock Prime remained still for a half-second longer, gaze turned toward the noise, expression mild.

“I suppose,” he said dryly, “that thirty minutes was… an optimistic projection of the sedative’s efficacy.”

McCoy was already halfway to the door. “Well, you know Jim, always exceeding expectations…”

“Indeed I do, doctor. Indeed I do.”

Chapter Text

The transporter pad was quiet. Still.

Too still.

This place, this wondrous machine concieved and crafted by the sharpest minds in the galaxy for the express purpose of making possibilities manifest, rang hollow with the echoing weight of absence.

Empty.

Spock stood before it with his hands clasped behind his back, spine straight, face schooled into calm neutrality. But inside, something smoldered.

He had watched the column of light dissipate with clinical precision, recalculating for variables, interference, margin of error. Yet no amount of scientific rigor had altered the outcome.

She had not materialized.

Amanda Grayson was gone.

Spock stood, reliving that terrible moment. The hum of the transporter system faded, leaving only silence. A silence that pressed against his ears like vacuum pressure, as though the world had briefly stopped and was deciding whether to start again.

Spock was not certain if it ever would.

Footsteps approached from behind—measured, deliberate.
He did not turn.

“You are troubled,” said the familiar voice of his father, serene and slightly judgmental as always.

Spock allowed several seconds to pass before replying. “I am… attempting to reconcile the consequences of uncertainty.”

Sarek stepped beside him, folding his hands calmly within the sleeves of his robes. His gaze, too, rested on the empty platform.

“Chance, I am finding,” Spock mused, voice low, “is often fickle, nonsensical… and sometimes seems almost…cruel.”

His father waited, allowing him the space to expand upon his thoughts aloud.

“In another timeline,” Spock continued, “my mother lived. Vulcan itself endured. The two of you remained together for nearly half a century more before her passing… peacefully, surrounded by family.”

His voice did not waver, but the heat behind it was unmistakable.

“And I find myself angry,” Spock admitted. “Not only at the one who took her life… but at the universe and unfairly envious of the version of myself whom had those years. Years that are now… lost to me.”

Sarek was quiet for a long moment, weighing his words carefully as always.

“I have spoken to the elder Spock,” he said. “He told me of that other life. Truly, a fascinating glimpse into the variance of existence. Of the many things of which we spoke, one being that, in that universe, he and I… continued our most recent estrangement far longer than I would have anticipated. Apparently, the two of us did not converse for near on two decades after his choice of Starfleet over attendance at the Vulcan Science Academy.”

Spock inclined his eyebrow at his father, a gesture that the two of them shared. That particular wedge—though not yet resolved in this timeline—had lingered at the edge of their relationship. Indeed, Spock could now envision that, barring the events of today, that estrangement could indeed have remained a sore spot for years to come.

In light of recent events, however, such a quibble seemed shamefully petty.

What a difference did tragedy make.

“I have come to realize that there are some things that I regret,” his father pressed on, surprising his son, “that certain decisions of mine have, in the past, been…ill considered,” Sarek continued quietly. His voice was softer than Spock had ever heard it—still Vulcan, but touched with something more vulnerable. “However, of one thing I am absolutely certain. Out of the all the questionable choices I have made in my lifetime, and I regret to admit that that number is not negligible, choosing to love your mother… and by extension, yourself, our son… will never be among them.”

The words struck Spock with more force than he had expected.

He looked back at the transporter pad.

Empty.

But not forgotten.

“I will find a way to honor her,” Spock said. “In this life… in this time. I will make it matter.”

Sarek’s expression didn’t change. But his presence, for once, felt less like pressure and more like support.

They stood in silence, two men from a broken world, mourning the same woman.
Different regrets.

Same love.

Spock stood quietly beside his father, the silence of loss stretching in all directions—across time, space, timelines. Loss layered upon loss. He did not look at Sarek as he spoke again, his voice low and controlled.

“I do not understand how you bear it,” he said. “To lose her. To lose our world. And still stand as you do. I find myself… compromised. Incomplete.” In a rare moment of honesty, Spock admitted, “Perhaps it is because I am not Vulcan enough.”

Sarek’s head turned sharply. “You presume much, my son.”

Spock blinked and glanced at him. “Do I, Father? I struggle to comprehend my emotions, much less contain them, and yet you are unmoved…I confess myself envious of that ability.”

“You know nothing of my inner thoughts,” Sarek stated, an edge of harshness tinging his voice. “You see my discipline and mistake it for detachment. That is not a flaw in your heritage, Spock—it is a flaw in your assumption.” He paused and then added, “or perhaps my instruction has been lacking…”

Spock opened his mouth, then closed it again. He stepped closer, his voice quieter. “Then… help me understand.”

Sarek regarded him, then slowly raised his hand in the gesture Spock knew well. “If you wish it.”

Their fingers met.

It was not a full meld—just a brush of minds. A glimpse. Still, it was far more than they had shared for many long years.

His father’s thoughts laid bare.

In that glimpse Spock felt the enormity of his father’s grief: the silence where Amanda’s laughter had once lived, the searing pressure of duty against helplessness, the lifelong discipline fraying under the weight of too many goodbyes. The bitter burn of regret…

Spock recoiled, the pain was too much. The connection ended and the two stood apart again.

A tear traced down each of their cheeks, unshed emotion crystallized into something real, something shared.

Spock lowered his eyes. “Forgive me, Father. I should not have—”

“There is nothing to forgive,” Sarek said gently. “Ambassador they may call me, but when it comes to my own son, my communication may have not always been… the most efficient.”

Spock looked up, startled by the admission.

“I find it it yet another regret I hold,” Sarek added. “I shall endeavor to do better in the future.”

Spock swallowed against a strange tightness in his throat. “I… am grateful.”

This time they did not retreat from the silence. They stood in it together.

The room did not feel quite so empty as it once had.

After a few moments, Spock stepped down off the transporter pad.

“Have you been assigned quarters, father?” he asked, respectfully. “If not, I offer mine. They are not large, but I have the environmental controls set for Vulcan norms…” He allowed the morose thought that no true Vulcan environment remained in existence to pass through his consciousness.

Sarek shook his head. “No, thank you my son, the Acting Captain made certain that a portion of the seventh level be adjusted for the comfort of the…survivors. There is space enough there.”

“That was thoughtful of him,” Spock noted.

“Indeed,” agreed Sarek. “He is a remarkably competent individual, for a human, particularly considering his youth.”

“And inexperience,” Spock added.

“That as well.” Sarek noted the stiffness of his son’s posture returning.

“Something else troubles you?”

Spock shifted, subtly. A fraction of a breath held longer than necessary. Then he inclined his head. As his father had been willing to share his troubles with Spock, then perhaps it could be advantageous to reciprocate.

“You are correct,” Spock decided. “It is not only the events of today that weigh on me.”

Sarek studied his son, his profile illuminated faintly by the soft lighting of the transporter bay. For a long moment, he said nothing.

“I surmise,” Sarek hazarded, “that the elder version of yourself spoke to you not only of his history with you and your Mother… but also of his connection with Captain Kirk of his universe.”

Spock did not deny it.

“I therefore assume you are also aware of the nature of that bond,” the elder of the two said, voice lower now, each word measured like a controlled burn.

“T’hy’la” breathed Spock.

“Correct.”

“It is not a term used lightly.”

“No,” Sarek said calmly. “It is not.”

Spock drew in a breath. “Then you know it was not simply friendship. Not camaraderie. It was a bond that defied classification—spiritual, intellectual… physical.”

Sarek raised a brow, the gesture faint but distinct.

“Why does that trouble you?”

Spock’s jaw tightened. “Because I cannot determine whether I am burdened by the weight of his bond… or… drawn toward it.”

Finally, he turned to face his father. His expression was composed, but his eyes—so like Amanda’s—held conflict.

“I have shared few words with Captain Kirk of this timeline, and of those few, many have been less than amicable. We are not… close. And yet…” Spock looked away again.

“There is familiarity. Resonance. Echoes of another self I do not remember being… and yet cannot ignore. My initial response was…irritation. I fear I misjudged him on our first meeting.”

Sarek’s gaze did not waver. “You are not that Spock, and he is not that Kirk, he said gently. “And yet, on some level you are. The question is not whether the bond is yours… but whether you wish it to become something more than it is under these circumstances.”

Spock said nothing.

Sarek stepped closer, his tone neither condemning nor coercive. Simply… present.

“There is no logic in resenting what another version of you cherished. Nor is there logic in denying your own path out of fear that it may mirror his.”

Spock looked at him, studying him. Slowly, he inclined his head in acknowledgment. “Your words are… received.”

Sarek nodded. “Then may you walk your path without shame. And with clarity.” He raised his hand in the traditional farewell.

Spock returned the gesture. Then his father exited the room, his robes whispering behind him.

Spock remained, staring at the transporter pad. Alone again—but no longer untouched by the thought of connection.

Of bonds, past… and perhaps, future. Then, as if summoned by the timing of fate, the comm chirped to life.

“Computer,” came McCoy’s voice, tight with urgency. “Locate Commander Spock.”

“Commander Spock is in the main transporter bay,” the system replied.

Spock raised a brow.

“Tell him to report to sickbay. Now. He’s gonna want to hear this.”

A pause. Then Spock spoke, voice regaining its composure.

“Acknowledged, Doctor. I am on my way.”

But even as the words left his lips, the comm flared again—this time layered beneath it, the shrill wail of a biobed alarm, distant but unmistakable.

Spock Prime’s voice followed, dry and grave and difficult to make out over the cacophony: “I suppose that thirty minutes was… an optimistic projection of the sedative’s efficacy.”

McCoy again, with an overlay of anxiety this time, exaggerated even for the good doctor:

“Spock, better hurry…”

Chapter Text

The doors to sickbay slid open with a mechanical hiss, and Spock moved through them at a near run, uncharacteristic haste tightening his every movement.

It took him three strides before he began to comprehend the scene before him.

James T. Kirk thrashed about on the biobed, bare-chested and drenched in sweat, muscles straining, eyes wide and vacant with terror. His mouth moved in jagged bursts, spitting words Spock couldn’t make out, fragmented by the high, cracked pitch of his voice. His back arched, and a strangled noise tore from his throat—a sound not of pain, but memory.

The most disturbing sight, however, was more subtle. Under the young captain’s hands, the reinforced metal structure beneath him had begun to crumple. It reminded Spock of the breaking down of paper material before being fed into a replicator.

But this was medical grade bulkhead material, designed to withstand loads and forces far in excess of what even a Vulcan should have been able to bring to bear.

Fascinating…

Doctor McCoy trembled at the bedside, clutching a hypo, hovering like a man trying to reason with a hurricane.

“Kirk—Jim, you’re safe! You’re on the Enterprise, goddammit, look at me!”

But Kirk didn’t see him.

Spock Prime was there, too, hand outstretched, voice low and measured. “Jim—Kirk, it is not real. You are not there. You are—”

His fingers brushed Kirk’s temple, a gentle, familiar motion.

Too familiar.

Kirk's body recoiled like he'd been burned. With a guttural yell, he snapped—

—and Spock watched in stunned silence as the captain—a human, supposedly—grabbed the front of the older Vulcan’s robe and hurled him across the room like a rag doll.

Spock Prime collided with the far wall and crumpled, stunned but alive.

McCoy swore viciously. “Spock! Restrain him!”

Without hesitation, Spock vaulted across the room and pinned Kirk’s shoulders down against the bed.

“Captain, you must be still—”

But Kirk’s strength was unnatural. He bucked under Spock’s grip, his hands seizing Spock’s forearms with vice-like intensity. Spock felt his joints strain and grind, Kirk’s wild eyes locked on him like prey staring down a predator, blue and cold and oh so empty...

It occurred to Spock that this expression was not one of rage—it was one of unmitigated terror.

Primordial.

And then—snap—the captain’s limbs went slack.

The hiss of a hypospray cut the air as McCoy leaned over and jabbed it into Kirk’s neck, breath shallow with guilt and relief.

Kirk slumped, unconscious, chest quivering.

Spock slowly released him, his own hands trembling slightly. As he helped McCoy lift the unconscious man back onto the biobed, his eye couldn’t help but be drawn to the crumpled surface.

The reinforced frame of the biobed—dented. The metal edges at Kirk’s sides had been crushed inward, curled and warped beneath his palms like tinfoil.

Spock stared.

His brilliant mind searched for a reasonable explanation and found none. No standard human could have done that.

Not even close.

McCoy was breathing heavily, already preparing another cocktail of chemicals and inhibitors on his tray. He didn’t look up when he spoke.

“Check on the old man, Spock. Make sure he didn’t break anything. I need to figure out a way to wake Jim without sending him back into hell.”

Spock gave a sharp nod, even as his eyes flicked one more time to the warped frame of the biobed.

James T. Kirk was not what he seemed.

Yet another complication to balance with their already too precarious situation.

************

Darkness, thick and suffocating, clamped down on Jim like a vice.

There was no air.
No light.
Only the echo of his voice.

“Hold still, boy. This won’t hurt unless you make it hurt.”

Something glinted—scalpel? Injector? Jim couldn’t move. He was strapped down, cold metal beneath him, restraints biting into his skin.

Not again. Not again.

The hum of archaic machines. The stench of antiseptic and sweat.
Kodos. The lab.
The unrelenting sting behind his eyes.

Pain. White-hot and everywhere. It lingered in the bone like it remembered.

“You should be proud. You’re going to be better.”

He screamed—only he didn’t, not really. It was all inside. Silent, desperate, clawing. The sedation pinned him like an insect, conscious just enough to remember.

He thrashed—but his limbs barely twitched.
Suddenly—

Light.

Cool white. Sterile.

Sound filtered in, distorted, like voices underwater.

“…Jim—”

“…monitor—spiking—”

“…shouldn’t be awake yet—”

Shapes began to form through the haze. At first, just silhouettes—three of them, too close. Hands hovered above him…this is how it would go: Hands first, then words, then needles…

Jim felt a light touch running through his hair, a sick mockery of gentleness that he had long ago stopped believing in, and yet each time he couldn’t deny the longing for the tender, loving caress that it would never be.

His mind dredged up memories unbidden.

“You’re going to be so beautiful James…”

NO

This was not beauty. This was not perfection. What he was becoming was monstrous, unnatural, inhuman…

He struck out and the touch vanished. More crashes and yells and screaming and then he felt a pair of strong arms banded around his chest.

He struggled against them, and just before the bones within them started to give way…he felt the confusing sting of a hypospray.

Strange. Kodos only ever used needles. The fucker was nothing if not precise.

Some time passed and he floated blissfully unaware again.

Not long enough.

To be fair, it wasn’t the sedation itself that Jim hated. Sedation was great, getting sent somewhere where he didn’t have to think, didn’t have to feel?

Yeah, he was all for that. That part was one hundred percent Fan-fucking-tastic.

It was the waking up that sucked.

It would be one thing if it happened all at once. If he could go straight from completely unconscious to wide awake, he’d be fine with it. It was the in between time that threw him. The time when he wasn’t quite sure what was real and what was not. The twilight sleep that threw him right back into his worst nightmare, thirteen, skinny, terrified and unable to control the shaking brought on as the retroviruses ravaged his system. The searing fever, the squirming of tissue reforming itself beneath his skin…and later being held down, hearing/feeling the pop of needles piercing his spine, tiny machines damaging him in just the right way as to trigger change… but worst of all, woven through all the pain and the fear floated that voice. That slimy, clinical, sickly adoring voice that kept praising him, acknowledging his suffering, telling him over and over how well he was doing…how perfect he was going to be…

How it would all be worth it…

Yeah. Fuck that.

Then the blur sharpened. Two Spocks—one older, the other familiar—and Bones, wide-eyed and swearing under his breath, tricorder in hand.

Jim slammed back into awareness all at once, gasping as if his heart were trying to claw its way out of the bed without him.

He sucked in a breath. It felt too big for his lungs.
Right. Sickbay. Enterprise. Present. Not Tarsus.

Not anymore.

But his skin still crawled like he was thirteen and trapped in that chair.

He groaned, tried to sit up, but everything lagged.

“Stay down, Jim.” Bones again, gentle but firm, pushed at his shoulder. “You’re safe.”

Jim’s vision finally locked on the nearest figure.

Young Spock, stiff-backed and tense, dark eyes locked on his like he was trying to read thoughts without a meld. He was helping the older one to his feet—careful hands, steadying him by the elbow, saying nothing but watching everything.

Jim breathed through his teeth.

“Didn’t… like that,” he managed, throat raw.

“I am aware,” Bones said grimly.

“Sedation,” Jim muttered, “was a terrible idea.”

“Yes,” Spock Prime replied, voice low and steady.

“But it may yet have bought us just enough time.”

Jim stared at the three of them, awareness slowly settling back into place—and with it, dread.

“…What happened?” he asked hoarsely. “What did I miss?”

And why were they all looking at him like that?

Bones and both Spocks exchanged a glance.

“Christ,” Bones muttered. “Where do we even start?”

But Jim’s attention was drawn away as he noticed something.

The biobed.

The fucking biobed was bent.

The edge of the frame—reinforced alloy, meant to withstand all manner of impacts—was twisted inward like someone had tried to fold it in half with their bare hands.

Someone.

Him.

“Shit,” Jim breathed.

His fingers curled reflexively, like he could undo the damage just by willing it. He glanced around.

One of the cabinets was dented. A cart lay overturned on the floor. Medical equipment—crushed, shattered, scattered.

Sickbay looked like a phaser grenade had gone off.

He turned toward the others.

And Jim knew.

He must have freaked out. Fully lost it. Gone feral. His brain filled in the blanks—he’d thrown the older Spock across the room. Had nearly taken out the younger one, too. His arms ached, probably from Bones’ hypo hitting just in time to stop him from dislocating something on the Vulcan.

He sat back slowly against the wall of the biobed, jaw tight.

“Sorry,” he whimpered pitifully, voice low and ragged, in addition to sounding far far too young.

Neither Spock answered. They didn’t need to.

They knew.

They both knew.

Jim had known there was little chance of hiding it for long. To be honest, he was surprised it had remained a secret as long as it had.

Augmented. Engineered. Altered. Whatever label fit. The secret that had clung to him like a shadow since Tarsus, that he kept buried deeper than anything else—out. Gone.

Double fuck.

He leaned his head back, suddenly cold, suddenly furious.

“Bones,” he said, eyes flicking toward the CMO, voice croaking.

“Why the hell did you call him in here?”

He nodded toward young Spock.

Bones opened his mouth, but it was the elder Spock who answered.

“Because he is involved, and may help to find a solution to our predicament,” Spock Prime said gently.

“How, exactly?”

“It has to do with a compatibility of minds…” the elder began.

Jim turned toward him, and the older Vulcan folded his hands behind his back. His expression was calm, but his eyes… gods, his eyes looked ancient.

“T’hy’la it is called,” the old Vulcan said. “In our tongue, it means friend, brother… or beloved. This is the bond I shared with your counterpart.”

Jim tensed. “Okay? And?”

“When I mind-melded with you,” Spock Prime continued, “I left behind an echo—of memories, yes, but also of my own bond with the Jim Kirk of my time. It was unintentional. The meld should not have affected you so deeply. But… when your mind recognized me, and recognized Kodos in those memories, the trauma fractured your mental defenses.”

Jim swallowed.

Spock Prime went on, voice calm and infuriatingly reasonable. “Your mind attempted to reach out. Not to me, but to… a Spock. It attempted to create a bond to stabilize itself. But what formed was incomplete. A partial bond, spontaneous and fragile. Unbalanced. And now, it is bleeding through.”

“Bleeding through,” Jim echoed flatly.

“Yes.”

“So, let me get this straight.” Jim stared at all three of them like they’d grown a second head. “Because I touched your brain, and your brain had your Kirk in it, my brain thought this Spock,” he pointed at the younger one, “was the right one to… to link up with? And now I’m… messed up because that link isn’t finished?”

“That is an imprecise but generally accurate summary,” Spock Prime said. “One could think of it as a bridge half constructed, lacking the stability or functionality of a completed structure and vulnerable to damage from lesser forces than it should be able to withstand were it whole.”

Jim laughed—one short, bitter bark. “Fantastic. So how do we fix it?”

The silence answered him before anyone spoke.

Spock Prime finally said, “The bond could be completed.”

Jim stared at him. His entire sense of self, such as it was, recoiled at the idea.

“No.”

“It would stabilize the bleed-through and allow you to regain full control of your mind.”

“I said no!” Kirk shouted, “I barely know either of you! What kind of backwards Vulcan mind magic bullshit—”

He surged to his feet, staggering a little. Bones reached for him, but Jim waved him off, furious. He could feel the anger/terror burn behind his eyes, in his skin, in the cracks of his voice.

“I’m done being special. I’m done being some chosen project or exception or fucking fascinating case study. I was a kid in a lab once, okay? I didn’t get a choice then, and I sure as hell don’t want this shoved on me now!”

“Jim,” offered McCoy…

“Fuck. It’s bad enough that my body is no longer my own, now I’m supposed to share my mind? FUCK THAT.”

He raged. “No. No. You don’t get to drop this kind of Vulcan mystic mind-bond soulmate bullshit and act like I’m just supposed to go with it.”

“Captain,” Spock Prime offered gently, “you are not being asked—”

“I know what I’m being asked.” Jim’s voice shook. “I’m being told that I’m broken unless I let one of you inside my head, maybe even my soul, because something in me reached out for one of you and now it’s driving me insane.”

He attempted to step away from the twisted remains of the biobed —and immediately staggered, knees buckling. Bones lunged, caught him, but Jim shoved him off.

“Don’t touch me!”

They backed off. Even Spock.

Jim paced, wobbling with each step like a man walking off a bad fever. It felt as if there was acid boiling under his skin.

And he would know.

“You’re special, James,” the voice crooned in his skull. Kodos, ancient and amused. “You were made for more.”

“Fuck that,” Jim hissed aloud. “Like I said, I’m done being ‘special.’ I’m done being the science experiment, the unique variable, the ‘fascinating’ one. You want me to mind-meld my way to sanity just because some cosmic crap decided I was born exceptional? Because I’m part of some fucked up pre-ordained trans-dimensional love triangle?”

No one answered. They watched.

Watched him rage. Watched him pace like a caged thing, like a boy in a nightmare too old to wake up.

Their silence only made it worse.

And when he glanced back—when he saw them—he nearly lost it all over again.

Three sets of eyes, full of worry and pity and… something worse.

Something soft.

Like he was fragile.

Like he was a cracked thing they were all afraid to touch.

He clenched his fists.

“How dare you.”

“Jim,” Bones said, quietly now.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he snapped. “Like I’m broken. Like I need this.”

“We believe,” Spock Prime said carefully, “that you have already endured more than should ever have been asked of you.”

“Then stop asking for more.”

His voice cracked, rough with fury—and something close to despair.

He stood there shaking, the sedative still pulling at the corners of his vision, everything in his chest tight, breath shallow.

And not one of them tried to argue.

They just let him stand there.

Let him burn.

Fuck everything.

Fine. To hell with it. Jim was sick of fighting.

So, for perhaps the first time in his life, James T. Kirk turned on his heels and RAN.

Chapter Text

“Well,” McCoy muttered, breaking the silence, “that went about as well as a Klingon in a coffee shop.”

*********

Jim ran.

Through the corridors of his ship—though he didn’t feel much like the captain of anything right now.

He was relieved to be spared the sharp glances from crew members, the startled expressions as he barrelled past. The halls rang achingly empty, as if everyone were holding their breath against what was to come.

Jim should have been preparing. Should be calm, in control…leading.

Instead his legs moved on autopilot, feet slapping against metal decking, breath ragged, the tail end of the sedative dragging at his balance.

He couldn’t force himself to stop.

His thoughts were a mess. Knots of fury and confusion. He kept seeing flashes—Spock’s face, Bones’ hand on his shoulder, metal bending under his grip, the look in their eyes when they realized what he was.

What he really was.

Augmented. Not just lucky. Not just clever. Not just a survivor. Built. Like he was some experiment. Constructed, piece by piece, with no more care than this very ship.

He hated it.

He didn’t realize where he was going until he was there: the observation deck. Wide, quiet, framed by transparent aluminum that gave way to the stars. Space stretched endlessly on the other side of the glass, vast and uncaring.

Jim stopped.

He braced his hands on the edge of the console, sucking in air like the time he had nearly drowned in the waterway that had given Riverside, Iowa its name. His chest heaved. His pulse was still erratic. But slowly, slowly, the ship around him steadied him.

The hum of the engines. The distant, familiar thrum of the warp core. The silent whisper of the stars.

He remembered coming here once, just two years ago, during a construction seminar between his first and second year. The Enterprise had still smelled of solder and fresh paint. She hadn’t even flown yet. Just a skeleton of what she would be. And even then, he’d fallen in love.
Now…there was a familiarity that hadn’t been there before, like this space had sheltered him time and time again.

Probably some of that bleed through Spock had talked about.

Dammnit.

Still, he felt a kinship with this ship, always had. As they hurled themselves through the darkness he felt it. Now she was real. And his. That should have meant something.

But instead, everything felt like it was spiraling out of his control.

He sank down slowly onto floor that curved around the viewport. The quiet was a balm, but his thoughts refused to follow suit.

A bond? With Spock?

Jim pressed face against the window.

Not just a bond—t’hy’la. A concept that sounded like something out of a myth, impossibly intimate and layered, and—hell—fated. That part scared him most of all. Fate had never been kind to Jim Kirk.

He didn’t want to be bonded. He didn’t want to be manipulated. He didn’t want to need something, someone, so profoundly that it rewrote the architecture of his brain.

And yet… part of him already felt it. That tug in his chest. That strange sense of connection. That rightness he’d buried under layers of anger and fear.

Goddamn Vulcans and their minds and their melds and their stupid, quiet loyalty.

Jim laughed once. A bitter, choked sound.

It’s not like either of them actually wanted him. It was just another fucked up quirk of the universe that for some reason had always seemed to hate him in particular.

He’d almost killed Spock Prime.

And now he was expected to bond with him? Or his younger self?

His heart thundered. Not with panic, not anymore—but with uncertainty. And something dangerously close to grief. Not just for what he’d lost—his control, his certainty, maybe even his choice—but for what he might have to give.

And what he would never receive in return.

Outside the window, stars burned quietly in the black.

Jim swallowed hard.

Nero was still out there. Waiting. A black hole in space and memory. And this—whatever this was— it was just the squall before the storm.

He closed his eyes, palm resting against the transparent aluminum, as if he could steady himself against the stars.

“…You’re really not gonna let me out of this, are you?” he whispered.

No answer came, and in the silence, he felt utterly alone.

***************

Spock stood in sickbay, silent but watchful, the tension tightening across his shoulders like a noose. The young Kirk had vanished—bolted from the room in a storm of rage and grief—and now only the three of them remained: Spock himself, his elder counterpart, and Dr. McCoy.
The air felt thin. The silence, heavier than Vulcan stone.

“How,” he asked, choosing to address the Selat in the room head on, “did Captain Kirk come to be genetically enhanced?”

The acting CMO exhaled sharply and rubbed the back of his neck, clearly agitated. Spock Prime glanced toward the monitor, then back at his younger self.

After a long pause, Spock Prime spoke. “It began on Tarsus IV. In my timeline, Jim was offered the opportunity to travel off world to stay with some relatives after completing his secondary school curriculum early. If I recall, he had just turned twelve and had previously been ‘a bit of a nerd,’ as he described it.” The old being’s mouth twitched in remembered fondness. “He considered his early time spent there to have been crucial to his later development. ‘It helped me pull my nose out of books and learn to deal with actual people. It taught me that being a smart-aleck wasn’t worth much unless it helped to get the chores done, cows don’t care much about philosophy and rhetoric,’ he once told me.”

“I doubt he said smart-aleck,” the doctor scoffed.

His older self shrugged, a strangely human gesture that Spock found hard to imagine ever being comfortable enough to perform gracefully.

“Well, that was the meaning behind his statement as I understood it, if not the exact phrasing.” He continued, “The fungus began to appear around his thirteenth birthday, and it spread quickly. Within a few weeks, it had become clear that there would not be enough food for everyone. Kodos’ ‘solution’ was as calculated as it was monstrous…”

“Reduce the number of mouths to feed,” the doctor snarled, “by any means necessary.”

The time traveler nodded, wearily.

The doctor took over the narrative. “Well, that’s one thing that went different here. My Jim got sent there as a punishment for wrecking his stepdad’s car.”

The elder raised an eyebrow, “He was older, then?” he asked.

McCoy laughed, “nope, about the same age as far as I can tell. I got the feeling he was more of a hellion than a nerd but there’s no telling with Jim. You can have an entire conversation with him and learn absolutely nothing that he doesn’t want you to.”

“As I understand it,” Spock said. “The records recorded the mass famine, then the massacre which later lead to rioting before Starfleet could intervene, a tragedy certainly but not—this.” He gestured subtly toward the deformed metal, proof that what had seemed impossible had in fact occurred. “This was calculated. Designed.”

He raised his eyes to his two companions.

“Somewhere, the two timelines diverged dramatically.” He concluded.

McCoy scoffed bitterly. “Don’t know how it went there, but here the records are sanitized. Sanitized and buried. Even Starfleet doesn’t know the full extent of what happened down there.” He paused, thoughtful, “I imagine Jim had a lot to do with that.”

Spock Prime’s voice was low. “Apparently, what history has left out is that Kodos’s solution to the famine wasn’t just execution. He believed in a form of survival… through selection. Enhancement. How much of this was true in my timeline, I do not know. Due to a strange twist of genetic fate, my Jim did not display the blue eyes he does here. He was therefore marked as ‘expendable’”

“Bastards,” murmured McCoy.

“Indeed,” the Vulcan agreed. “In any case, that Kirk escaped into the wilderness with a group of younger children where they survived until help arrived.”

Bones nodded grimly. “Well, apparently, that one was lucky. Turned out that Kodos wasn’t just a butcher—he was a ‘scientist’. One with a twisted idea of mercy. He wanted to build something out of the ashes.”

Spock’s brow furrowed. “You are saying he experimented on the survivors?”

Spock Prime nodded. “That is the conclusion I have come to, yes. Particularly on those who exhibited resilience. Children. They were easier to manipulate. Easier to control.”

“Jim still protected those he could,” McCoy pointed out, eager to defend his friend, “He didn’t come right out and say so but I got the feeling that Kodos was kinda obsessed with the kid. Jim said he used to ‘piss him off on purpose so he’d leave the others alone.”

They all caught the implication.

“Perhaps the Jim of my time was indeed fortunate,” elder Spock said “The James Kirk of my universe may have been among the Tarsus Nine,” his gaze fixed distantly before continuing. “He did endure the massacre. He bore the trauma. But he was not genetically enhanced. He did not have that added burden.”

McCoy’s brow furrowed in confusion, “Nine?”

“Yes,” Spock prime said, “himself and eight others.”

The physician turned sharply to the terminal beside him and began pulling up the ship’s records. Spock watched as McCoy’s fingers worked the controls with barely restrained rage.

The screen lit up.

Tarsus IV Massacre
Known survivors: 47.
Ages at time of incident: All under 12.

The room fell still again.

McCoy’s voice, when it broke the silence, was low with awe and no small amount of pride. “Forty-seven. That’s five times as many as survived in your timeline.”

Spock blinked. “Five point two-two times,” he murmured without thinking.

The math was exact. The implication, staggering.

In his elder’s timeline, James T. Kirk had endured Kodos’s atrocities and emerged with the fire to lead. But here, in this altered reality—this darker, harsher strand—Kirk had saved not eight others, but nearly fifty. As a child. As a boy already broken.

Spock looked to the screen, then to the empty spot where Kirk had stood, his mind reeling with quiet astonishment.

Despite his torment, despite the unspoken horrors that ran like fractures through his soul, this Kirk had pulled dozens from the abyss.

It was illogical.

It was extraordinary.

And it explained far too much.

James T. Kirk.

A child forged in horror, a boy who saved forty-seven lives when most would have crumbled under the weight of fear. A young man who bore the weight of leadership with reckless courage and relentless compassion. And now, a captain unraveling at the seams—not because of weakness, but because he had carried too much, too long, alone.

Spock’s chest tightened.

He had misjudged him. Repeatedly. He had seen the arrogance, the rule-breaking, the brash impulse—and mistaken it for emptiness. But behind it had always been something else: fire.

Conviction. Kindness. Strength.

Spock’s hands curled at his sides, not in tension, but in awe and no small amount of shame.

It should have been illogical, this admiration blooming in his chest. It wasn’t. It was something deeper, more primal, more true. The mind that had brushed against his—raw, aching, defiant—was one of staggering depth. And even now, breaking apart, Kirk reached outward, not inward. Trying to protect them.

To be bonded to such a man…

Spock inhaled sharply.

It should have filled him with dread. The loss of autonomy, the chaos, the uncharted emotional terrain. And yet—it didn’t. The thought of connection to someone so fiercely alive, so achingly human, filled him not with fear, but with something else.

Exhilaration.

Across the room, he felt eyes on him. He looked up—and met the gaze of his older self.
Spock Prime did not speak. He only nodded once, eyes heavy with understanding.

He knew.

He had known all along.

The ultimate privilege and responsibility they now held.

To love James Kirk, to keep him whole, and to embark upon a journey that Spock could never have imagined.

For all they had suffered, Spock felt truly blessed.

If only he could be certain that Jim felt the same.

Chapter Text

Spock turned as his elder self straightened, the calm in his expression giving way to something deeper—grief, perhaps, or resignation. Spock Prime looked to McCoy. He seemed to come to a sort of decision.

“Doctor,” he said, “I must ask to see James’s full medical file.”

McCoy froze, one hand still hovering near the terminal. His eye twitched menacingly.

“That’s one hell of a thing to ask,” he said, voice low and level. “You know that’s a violation of privacy.”

“I do,” Spock Prime said gently. “But we are past the point of convention. Whatever was done to him—genetically, neurologically—it is affecting him now, destabilizing the bond, overwhelming his mind. Without full knowledge of his physiological and psychological profile, I cannot help him. None of us can.”

McCoy scowled. “Dammit...”

Spock watched Leonard McCoy struggle, torn between his duty and loyalty to Jim, as both a friend and physician, and his desire to actually help that same man in some concrete fashion. A choice between medical ethics and the life of the man he had come to love as a brother (a brilliant, brat of a little brother, but brother nonetheless). For a moment, no one spoke. The only sound was the hum of the ship’s systems beneath them.

Then Bones exhaled, slow and bitter.

“You’re right,” he muttered. “God help me, but you’re right.”

He tapped a command into the terminal. The screen flickered, then displayed the “official” medical files of one Cadet (status, temporary academic suspension pending ruling of disciplinary council) James Tiberius Kirk. It was fairly run of the mill, height, weight, age, physical description. The list of allergens to be avoided was longer than most cadets’ but not excessive. A few strangely non-specific “minor” injuries and a couple other details that didn’t seem to matter much.

Then McCoy typed in a much longer series of codes and began to work his way through multiple levels of security, one of which involved a retinal scan and voice print identification.

Eventually, the fake information vanished and in its place appeared the actual, classified medical files of James T. Kirk. Rows of data and genetic markers scrolled past—hidden augmentations, enhanced neural resilience, hormonal regulation suppressants, emergency override triggers. A profile engineered for survival... and for secrecy.

Spock stared at the data, his mind already parsing it, searching for the reason behind the madness.

The more he learned, the less reason he found.

****************
———————————
BEGINNING OF EXPLICIT SECTION. If you don’t want to read, skip to the next section. It starts with “The hiss of the sickbay doors drew him out of his contemplative state.”
————————————
*******************

Spock Prime’s eyes moved steadily over the medical files, his aged face calm, but his thoughts racing beneath the surface like turbulent current raging below still waters.

The deeper he read, the more the picture unfolded—horrifying in its scope, yet chillingly brilliant in design. Kodos had not merely inflicted suffering. He had engineered it.

Spock’s jaw tightened as he parsed the genetic data. How had he done this? These ideas, these techniques, they were decades ahead of their time, and the intelligence required to combine them? Remarkable.

Kodos began with sample of the original retrovirus used in the Eugenics Wars—ancient, forbidden science—how a backwater governor had gained access to something so buried was curious enough, but this strain had somehow not only been recovered but also had been reengineered to act on nearly mature human cells. That in itself was unprecedented. The original virus had only worked during early development, shaping the embryo, rewriting the body from its earliest cell division.

But this? This was something new. Something deeply, morally, wrong. Targeted gene therapy had been a reality for decades, but this kind of mass restructuring would be nearly unthinkable even in Spock Prime’s time.

Then, programmable nanotechnology—equally decades ahead of its time—had been used to strategically damage tissues, tearing them down in targeted ways that forced the body to rebuild itself using the viral matrix. It was calculated suffering, enforced rebirth. A grotesque mockery of natural evolution.

Breaking down a pattern in favor of its new matrix…

Spock Prime’s eyes narrowed.

He focused in on the molecular structuring patterns, anxiously cross referencing them against a buried memory. Then—

“Oh,” he breathed. His fingers froze.

“Oh, No.”

Impossible.

The Genesis Project—Carol Marcus’s dream, a theoretical technology designed to rapidly restructure barren worlds into habitable ones—should not exist yet. Not in this time. And yet the principles here… were identical. The same cascading re-sequencing of matter. The same wave-based regenerative model. Except here, instead of a restructured biosphere, the changes were mapped out on a microscopic scale, not on a planet, but throughout a single human body.

This was not simply genetic augmentation.

This was stolen future science.

He sat back, his face now drawn with quiet alarm. He risked a glance at the young doctor, and got a knowing huff of shared disgust in return.

“You ain’t seen nothin yet,” the strange funhouse reflection of his old friend murmured. The eyes were different, but the tone, Spock knew that tone all too well.

Leonard McCoy was Furious.

Spock Prime turned back to his task, continuing his quiet analysis, eyes sweeping over the mountains of data. He dove deeper into the reconstruction logs and genomic overlays. It was not merely enhancement. The changes went far beyond strength or speed, beyond resilience or cognition.

He looked at McCoy again, this time in disbelief.

The doctor nodded grimly towards the information so nakedly displayed.

There had been structural modifications.

Foundational alterations.

Embedded within the layers of tissue reconstruction was a pattern of chromosomal rearrangement—subtle but profound. Gene clusters tied to endocrine regulation, reproductive function, even pelvic musculature and internal organ distribution had been… shifted. Modified. Integrated.

Spock Prime's breath caught. Not in shock—he had seen horrors before—but in the bitter taste of recognition interspersed with the all too familiar tang of grief.

“Monstrous,” he whispered.

These were not mere augmentations. This was reproductive engineering. The capacity not just to sire offspring, but under certain biological conditions… to gestate them.

A silence fell around him like a shroud.

“Sick Bastard,” the doctor spat.

Spock couldn’t help but agree.

He remembered the records from the Eugenics Wars, the notes from the most secret files of the Federation, the whispered flaws in the Augments—flaws their creators had sought, but failed, to overcome. One of the most damning failures had been their sterility. The original Augments, for all their power and intellect, could not pass on their legacy. A dead end by design. A mercy of biology.

Somehow, Kodos had found a way around it.

The implications struck like a blow. The meticulous, obscene attention to legacy, to continuation. Eugenics was never only about creating a superior individual—it was about shaping a superior lineage. A dynasty born in blood and science.

And he had done this to a child.

To Jim.

Spock Prime stared at the screen, revulsion knotting in his chest. There was no justification. No brilliance that could excuse such desecration. This type of engineering shouldn’t be possible, and certainly not on an individual who had begun to mature. Still, the cruelty of it made one thing painfully clear:

Kodos hadn’t just intended to make a survivor. He had intended to make a founder.

None of this made sense. Spock remembered the man, older, yes, but somewhat frail, posing as a harmless actor. That man may have been possessed of a cold type of cunning and no small measure of intellect, but to have accomplished something so revolutionary, on this scale, at this time?

No. There was some other factor at play.

Temporal interference. Again.

It was the only logical conclusion. Somehow, someone—Kodos or an accomplice—had acquired technology or knowledge far beyond what should have been available in their era.

Could it have been from the same ripples that had brought him here? Perhaps from Nero?

Or, most worryingly, from something worse?

He closed his eyes for a moment, steadying his breath.

Faced with the evidence of such cruelty, one point stood out

Even when shaped by unnatural hands, his T’hy’la had forged himself into something greater than the sum of the science—through pain, through will, through compassion.

Spock Prime felt sorrow.

And awe.

************
——————————-
End Explicit section
——————————-
************

The hiss of the sickbay doors drew him out of his contemplative state. He felt a rush of air open behind, followed by the unmistakable sound of boots scraping lazily against the floor. Without turning, he knew who it was. The quiet swagger was unmistakable.

A low, impressed whistle floated through sickbay. “Going over some pretty heavy shit,” came the voice—his voice, but not quite. Lighter. Younger. More brittle around the edges, and still carrying the tremor of something barely held together. “Hope I’m not interrupting…”

Spock Prime turned. Jim—this Jim—was leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed, casual as if he hadn’t just been sedated, traumatized, and cracked open at the cellular level. McCoy groaned.

Because Kirk was grinning.

“Oh hell. He’s got the look.”

“What look?” Jim asked, grinning. It was pure Kirk—bright, boyish, and maddeningly undeterred. “This is my I’ve got a really interesting idea face.”

McCoy placed his palms on either side of his head and raked finger through his hair. “Great. Can’t wait.”

Spock Prime studied the young captain carefully. On the very edges of his eyes, a small amount of red remained, the only evidence of his erstwhile emotional state. Alongside that small sign, there shone a familiar light. Not undamaged—never that—but focused. A mind catching fire on a dangerous track.

Jim pushed off the wall and walked forward, a little too nonchalantly, like a man playing the part of someone who hadn’t just had his entire sense of self dismantled.

“So, here's a thought.” He gestured broadly, like a showman building to a trick. “The Narada's drill—that thing somehow knocked out all planetary communications when it went active, yeah?”

The others exchanged a glance. This seemed to come out of left field. Yes, the Narada was a concern, but there were many other problems than needed to be addressed before they could even begin to tackle that one. Still, Jim looked as though he were working towards a point. Spock decided to play along.

The doctor was not so accommodating.

“Not to be a killjoy, but what does this have to do with the price of beans?” demanded Bones. “I thought we were working on a way to keep your brains from running out your ears in the next hour or so…”

Jim raised his hand to interrupt his friend, “I’m getting to that, but for now, humor me.”

McCoy’s answer could only be described as a rather exasperated “harumph”.

Returning to the Captain’s question, Spock answered. “That is correct. The gravitational and subspace interference was extensive.”

“Right,” Jim said. “So, no radio, no subspace, not even low-band hails got through. But… what about telepathy?”

Ah. There it was. That brilliant leap of intuition, the potential for which existed in all humans to one degree or another. In this in particular, even among his multiple talents, his captain had been extraordinary. Spock had seen this exhibited time and time again by a different James Kirk, often to stunning success.

He found that he had sorely missed it.

McCoy blinked. “What?”

Jim turned to face Spock Prime fully now. “This bond thing—between you and me—or him and me,” he gestured vaguely at young Spock, “however it works. It’s telepathic, right?”

Spock Prime nodded slowly. “It is.”

Jim’s grin sharpened. “How fast is it?”

Spock Prime stilled, fighting back what would have been on a lesser being, what McCoy might have called a “shit eating grin.”

Oh yes. That infuriating brilliance. The kind that would get him killed—or save a planet. Maybe both. The partial bond throbbed faintly in the back of his mind, unsettled but alive.

He is still frightened, Spock Prime thought. But he is not defeated.

“Faster than light,” Spock Prime answered at last, quietly. “Instantaneous, between bonded minds. Distance is irrelevant.”

Jim’s eyes lit up. He snapped his fingers.

“Exactly.”

Spock Prime felt the tremor beneath the surface. There was more to this than bravado—he knew. Jim had come here with purpose. With a plan. And a question neither Spock had yet dared to ask.

McCoy stared. “What the hell are you thinking?”
Jim’s smile didn’t waver. But the edge in his voice—sharp as a blade—told Spock Prime this was no longer a game.

“I’m thinking maybe we’ve got a way to beat someone who thinks he’s already won.”

His younger self graced the captain with a signature eyebrow.

Kirk continued his diatribe, gaining momentum, “Communications is an essential element of strategy, is it not, professor?” Kirk didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s what’s been bugging me about this whole plan, as soon as we beam onto the Narada, we’re on our own, completely cut off from the Enterprise. All we can do at that point is hope that Scotty puts us down in an empty part of that ship, and somehow manage to find both the jellyfish and Captain Pike, steal the red matter, dismantle the drill, get us all off that ship alive, and then make sure to take the Narada out completely before it can grow back again, preferably before it destroys Earth completely…not good odds I’d wager…”

“Approximately four point three percent,” Spock’s counterpart provided. “I foresee a complication, however..”

“Just one?” The Captain quipped.

“One among many, but this concern should be considered carefully.” The younger Vulcan turned towards the rest of the room, as if addressing a class instead of discussing a mad Hail Mary of an idea pitched by a not quite so stable, if brilliant, human being. “Even if he were to initiate a bond,” Kelvin Spock began, his tone clipped, “Captain Kirk is entirely untrained in mental discipline.”

Kirk didn’t even have the decency to look offended.

He paused, then corrected himself with the precision Spock Prime remembered so well.
“—of a psionic nature. He lacks the necessary control. It is highly improbable that he could master such complex telepathic tasks in the time available to us.”

Spock Prime inclined his head slightly. The assessment was sound. Undeniable, even. But Jim—this Jim—only nodded, unbothered.

“True, I would have absolutely no idea what I would need to do…” Kirk said, arms folded, grin creeping up again. “But you two do.”

Spock Prime felt a flicker of amusement bloom in his chest. Ah. He could already see where the young captain’s logic was veering, but he said nothing. He had always found it instructive to let Jim Kirk arrive at brilliance in his own time—and revel in the drama of it.

Kelvin Spock’s brow furrowed, as if he too were beginning to suspect. “It is not possible,” he said slowly, “to form a mental link between the same two individuals across quantum variation. It was only possible for us to meld on the bridge because there was actual physical contact. The Pauli exclusion principle would suggest—”

“Blah blah blah,” Kirk cut in, with a flick of his hand. “We’ve all passed postmodern quantum theory. That’s not what I’m suggesting. We’ve got one Spock already on the Narada infiltration team. You—” he pointed to Kelvin Spock, “—and me.”

He turned to Spock Prime, who stood a pace behind.

“You’re not going. You’re staying behind, remember?”

Spock Prime said nothing. He knew what was coming.

Kirk’s grin widened into something borderline feral. McCoy, standing nearby, groaned aloud, rubbing his temples.

“Oh no,” the doctor muttered. “Jim, are you about to kill me with crazy?”

Kirk lifted his chin, eyes bright with wild confidence, his non answer more of an answer than McCoy needed.

“So what if I bond with both of you?”

Silence.

Spock Prime blinked. Logic reeled.

Bold.
Risky.
Reckless.

And yet—exactly the kind of thinking that had won unwinnable battles and changed the course of history.

In other words, just another Thursday for James T Kirk.

Chapter Text

Jim’s mind had never been one that anyone would possibly call “quiet”. He’d been a clever child and a smartass preteen with a tendency to run his mouth off faster than sense could rein it in. After Kodos, he had spent a decade trying to outrun, outfight, or outfuck the multitudes of thoughts that would plague him unasked, denying him rest. (He had tried drinking, but thanks to Kodos, he would find that pursuing that particular pastime would only be an exercise in futility. Still, he could fake it.) By the time he had fought Cupcake and company, he’d gotten fairly good at it.

Somewhere between stuffing those tissues up his nose (appearances were important) and Pike’s dare, he’d realized that he had wanted more, and at the Academy, he’d actually almost managed to keep his mind occupied. It helped when you only needed half the sleep of a regular person and maxed out 75% of the academics in three years.

It had been…fun.

As he had curled up on the floor of the observation deck, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, forehead pressed to the cool metal of the bulkhead, all of those thoughts came raging back with a vengeance, his mind whirling more than usual—circling, clawing, chewing itself raw.

Grief for Vulcan. Fear for Earth. But worst of all had been that whispering, insidious, growing fear that, this time, when it really counted and the universe really needed him, he was finally too broken to help.

Not that the universe ever seemed to give a shit about him. Well, actually, it kinda did. There had been days when Jim had been convinced that the universe itself detested him in particular.

Most days actually.

“Fuck me and the road I horsed in on,” he had thought bitterly, eyes fixed on the stars. They just wheeled by, silent and distant, while he unraveled one frayed thread at a time.

He had barely felt human anymore, hadn’t for a long time. The augment changes, and now this the half-bonded psychic residue from two different versions of the same damn Vulcan, the way his thoughts sparked too fast and hit too hard—it all added up to something not quite him. Not anymore. He had already lost so much of who he was…what would it hurt to sacrifice a bit more? If only there were something he could Do.

Some way to make a difference, regardless of the cost to himself.

The half-bond thing…he still didn’t understand it. Sloppy, desperate, selfish. He’d sensed it in the meld—just a glimpse of what they had shared, Spock Prime and his own alternate self—and something in Jim’s mind had reached for it. Grabbed it. Jury-rigged a connection it had no business forging. He’d hadn’t even known what he was doing, clawing at something that wasn’t his to claim. Older Spock had described it as something inevitable. Something fated.

Bullshit.

Jim had been lonely, and scared, and his fucked up brain had clamped onto Spock Prime’s like a lifeline.

And now all of Earth was at risk because he couldn’t keep his shit together.

The so-called plan to take on Nero? Laughable. It required perfect timing, flawless improvisation, and a hell of a lot of luck. Not that he hadn’t come out on top against worse odds, but the price of failure here was catastrophic. Even worse, the margin for error was microscopic, and they would be flying blind. As soon as the Narada’s drill went live, communications with Starfleet—or anyone—would go dark. No subspace. No standard EM bands. No way to call for backup. Not even a distress beacon.
Which meant they’d have no way to coordinate with the Enterprise during the infiltration. No way to warn them. No way to ask for support.

Fuck.

He’d pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to force the panic back into the corners of his mind. If they could get to the red matter—before Nero used it on Earth—that was the real priority. That was the linchpin.

But how? How the hell were one crew of upjumped cadets and an ancient Vulcan supposed to pull this off with no communication, no support?

And in charge? A broken captain. Two Vulcans.

Against one monstrous enemy vessel.

That’s when the thought had come. Sharp, sudden, glittering.

The bond.

Telepathy didn’t depend on subspace or signals. It was instantaneous. Quantum entanglement. Non-local information transfer. He remembered reading something about it in a small footnote in a xenobiology and culture textbook. It had seemed esoteric at the time…

But now…

If he could strengthen this bond. Forge a proper one. Not just with one Spock, but with both of them.

He could become the link. A living psychic relay between the Narada and the Enterprise. He and the timeline’s Spock infiltrating the enemy. Spock Prime staying behind to guide the ship. And him—right in the middle—holding it all together.

The idea had thrilled and terrified him in equal measure.

It might just work.

At least then he’d be useful. At least then he’d matter.

It was a shame, really. The Spocks didn’t deserve to be tethered to someone as shattered as him. But they’d understand. They were Vulcan. Logical. Strategic. They’d see the value in it, even if they had to carry his broken mind along with them.

And surely—surely—there’d be a way to sever the link after, for their sake at least.

Somehow.

He’d wiped his eyes, pushed away from the pane separating him from the cold emptiness of space and made his way, steadily, back towards Sickbay.

He’d made his choice.

*****************

Bones wasn’t having any of it.

When he heard the kid’s “solution” he just about lost it.

Leonard McCoy paced sickbay like a caged cat, eyebrows angled dangerously inward, jaw clenched so tight it ached. He jabbed a trembling finger at Jim, then at the two Spocks, and back again. “Are you out of your damn minds? No—don’t answer that. I know the answer.”

Jim leaned against the biobed, arms crossed, expression infuriatingly calm in that “I’ve already made peace with the terrible plan in my head” way that meant nothing short of an actual phaser strike was going to knock sense into him.

Maybe not even that.

Bones turned to the younger Spock first. “You. Tell him. Tell him this is a bad idea.”

That Spock’s brow furrowed, but his voice remained maddeningly even. “As I explained, Doctor, the formation of a triple bond between the captain, myself, and my older counterpart is theoretically—”

“Theoretical my ass!” McCoy exploded. “You might as well hand him a tricorder and tell him to defuse a quantum torpedo with his teeth!”

He spun toward Spock Prime, who looked—damn him—all too contemplative.

“You’re not actually considering this, are you?” McCoy demanded. “You’re supposed to be the sensible one!”

“I am considering,” Spock Prime replied primly, “that while the risks are significant, the potential strategic advantage cannot be ignored.”

“Strategic—strategic advantage?” McCoy spluttered. “He is a person, not a Vulcan router!

Do you even hear yourselves?”

Jim didn’t flinch. “Bones—”

“No. Don’t you ‘Bones’ me.” McCoy turned on him, voice low and tight, advancing towards the younger man in sincere, if slightly aggressive, concern. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? You think I don’t see it? This isn’t about tactics. This is about guilt. About you thinking if you burn yourself up enough, it’ll make up for all the crap that’s happened.”

Jim looked away, and that was answer enough.

“I thought the whole damn point of this was to not scramble your brains,” McCoy said, quieter now, but no less furious. Moving in, trying to catch his friend’s eye. “And now you want to offer them up? As some sort of Vulcan psychic antenna system?”

Jim met his gaze, that brittle little grin ghosting over his mouth.

“If it saves Earth,” he said, quietly, measuredly, reasonably, “I’d say it’s worth the risk.”

And that was the worst part. The part McCoy hated most of all.

Because once again, Jim Kirk was right.

Damn that kid.

McCoy’s hands were clenched into fists so tight he felt the ache clear to his elbows. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shouted at anyone and meant it—not the usual banter, but real, visceral fury bubbling right behind his ribs.

Spock Prime, ever the diplomat, raised a calming hand.

“Doctor,” he said, tone level and precise, “this is not a standard telepathic link. A T’hy’la bond forms of its own accord. It is not imposed. It arises when a connection is both profound and... reciprocal. I believe the meld on Delta Vega may have accelerated the process, but such a bond is not unnatural.”

Bones wheeled around on him, jaw twitching.
“Oh, it’s natural, is it?” He slammed his hands to his waist as if they had offended him. “Well, let me tell you something, Spock—cyanide is natural. Supernovae are natural. Hell, I’ve seen cases of neurosporic thalamic cascade syndrome that were as natural as rain, and they melted people from the inside out!”

He let that sink in, glaring at both Spocks in turn.

“‘Natural’ don’t mean right. It sure as hell doesn’t mean safe.”

Jim remained quiet, still against the bed, which somehow only seemed to highlight its wrangled state. He kept his eyes on Bones now. That haunted look again, the one that said this isn’t about me, Bones, it’s about the mission. And dammit if that didn’t just make it worse.

“You’re talking about linking three minds together across timelines like it’s a group therapy session,” Bones pleaded. “But I know what I’m looking at. Jim’s running hot—barely holding together. And you want to plug that brain into a Vulcan feedback loop?”

He raked a hand through his hair. “You might as well give him a phaser set to overload and ask him to juggle.”

Spock Prime didn’t flinch. “There are... variables. But I will guide the process.”

Bones scoffed. “Guide it. Sure. And if something goes wrong? If his mind collapses under the strain, or worse—splinters—will you ‘guide’ it back together, too?”

No one answered.

“Right,” Bones muttered. “Didn’t think so.”

Jim’s voice came quiet from the corner.

“If we don’t do this…” he said, pushing off the bed with his hip, “if we wait, try to play it safe, then I’m probably going to lose it anyway.” The blue eyes that skewered the doctor were wide and serious.

Bones turned toward him, chest still heaving from the last rant. Jim didn’t flinch. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t throw on that grin like armor. He just looked tired. Clear-eyed. And that was somehow worse.

“I’m already holding together with duct tape and stubbornness, Bones,” Jim said, stepping forward. “This half-bond thing? It’s a leak I can’t patch. I’m bleeding signal, emotion, memory—and if something doesn’t give, I’m not going to be able to help anyone. Not Spock, not the Enterprise… and certainly not Earth.”

He shrugged one shoulder, like the idea of breaking apart didn’t quite scare him as much as it should.

“I’d rather take the risk now, with both of them, while I still have something left to offer.”

Bones hated that. Hated how damn reasonable it sounded. Hated the ache in his gut that came from hearing Jim speak like he was already halfway gone. Hated that the kid wasn’t wrong. McCoy stepped up and grabbed Jim around the back of his neck, pressing their foreheads together as if he could heal the boy’s mind with pure willpower.

“Damn it,” he growled, eyes closing in defeat. “I hate it when you start making sense.”

Jim grabbed one of the doctor’s wrists and gave it a little squeeze, then brought back the lopsided grin, fragile and soft, but real. “Had to happen sometime, Bones.”

Bones glared at the Spocks. “This is still a terrible idea. You Vulcans better know what you’re doing.”

Spock Prime bowed his head solemnly. “We will proceed with care, Doctor. I give you my word.”

Current Spock, standing quietly to the side until now, met McCoy’s eyes. “He is… not alone in this.”

Bones snorted, patted his friend on the back before letting go and stepping back. “Yeah, well. If this goes sideways, you two better be ready to fish him back out of whatever psychic blender you throw him into.”

“Duly noted,” Spock replied.

Jim glanced between them all and nodded once.

God he looked Terrified. And Determined.

Decision made. “Then let’s get started.”

Chapter Text

There was more to do, of course. Preparations to be made.

Not so much for Jim though.

Kirk stood under the hot spray of the water, hands braced against the shower wall, watching the rivulets run down the tile like they held answers to questions he hadn’t thought to ask. Real water, not sonic. He'd replicated the requisition override himself. Captain’s prerogative, as they said. Hm. He wasn’t much of a Captain. He had spent two hours in the chair before freaking out in sickbay during a simple examination, then run away and hid like a child. He held his breath and allowed the warmth to stream over his face. It felt indulgent. It also felt like penance.

Nine hours.

The Spocks were meditating. Bones was grumbling and muttering and refitting the isolation pod to accommodate three grown adults comfortably. Likely building a cocoon out of equipment and sheer stubbornness. And Kirk... Kirk was doing nothing.

He scrubbed his hands over his face and exhaled sharply, wishing it would clear the tightness in his chest. It didn’t. The steam made his lungs feel heavier, not lighter.

He was going to bond to both of them. To both Spocks. Inside of his mind. That thought circled his brain like a predator just out of reach. He’d committed to the plan because it made sense tactically—because it gave them a shot at coordinating their infiltration and the Enterprise’s movements in real time, even with the Narada’s communications interference. Because it gave him purpose, and that was better than spiraling into fear and grief.

But it didn’t mean he wasn’t scared.

He would have nowhere to hide. Two people. Inside his Mind. Surely they wouldn’t see everything, right? For their sake, he hoped not. Older Spock had described a bridge, but one did not have to cross it if one did not wish it.

Damn. He was already starting to think like them.

His hands trembled faintly when he reached for the towel. He ignored that and stepped out of the spray as it cut off.

The idea of letting two minds that were essentially one—older, younger, wiser, colder—into his own mind was enough to make his teeth clench. He’d already been pulled in too many directions since this whole nightmare started. Bonding would stabilize that… maybe. Or it might shatter him completely.

He shivered, toweling off briskly, trying to shake the crawling anxiety from his skin.

The observation deck had felt like teetering on a precipice. And this felt as if he were willingly jumping off the edge of it.

Kirk parked himself in front of the mirror and slung his towel low around his hips, the heat of the shower still clinging to his skin. Steam ghosted around the edges of the glass where he hadn’t wiped it clean.

He wanted to see.

There were no scars. No burns from Delta Vega, no fractures from the Romulan’s fists, no telltale ridges of old wounds long healed. No incision lines or puckered port scars. No neat ladders of pinpricks climbing alongside his spine or veins. Not a single blemish, not a single record etched into his skin of anything he’d endured—of everything he’d survived.

He looked like a man untouched.

He wasn’t.

His reflection stared back, too young, too smooth, too whole. It felt wrong, sometimes, to be so visibly unmarked when he felt so damn broken inside. It made the pain seem unreal, like it belonged to someone else. Like he didn’t deserve…

And now he was going to change again.

He could feel it, hovering at the edges of his awareness, something looming and irreversible. Memories of a life not his. Two minds pressing in from opposite ends of time. Two versions of Spock. Two halves of a bond already trying to form like a gravity well in his chest. All tied to a man whom Jim would never meet.

Would it leave a mark this time?

He wasn’t sure if he wanted it to. Part of him did—craved something tangible, some kind of proof that his pain mattered, that it cost him something. That he chose this. Another part feared what kind of scar that would be. Not just on his body. On his mind. His soul.

If there is an after, he brooded, what will be left of me?

He wrapped the towel tighter and leaned in, pressing his fingers to the glass. It fogged beneath his breath. He imagined, for a moment, seeing Kirk—the Kirk, the one from the prime universe—looking back from the other side.

What would he have done?

Probably something stupidly heroic. Probably would have walked right into it without flinching, because it was the right thing to do. Probably would’ve had more control, more discipline. He would have encouraged the crew with a laugh and a joke and then made some inspired speech that schoolchildren would be tasked with learning sometime in the near future. Wouldn’t have needed the bond to begin with. Wouldn’t have broken the way Jim had.

But searching his own eyes, the swirls and shadows of blue and grey he had known all his life, he tried to imagine them…warmer…different and yet not…maybe… maybe that other man would have been afraid, too.

It’s possible that he’d have looked at the stakes—at Earth hanging in the balance, at Spock barely holding himself together, at Bones pacing in the dark with worry—and made the same call.

Kirk exhaled.

“Yeah,” he decided. “I think you would’ve done it.”

And so would he. Because he was James Tiberius Kirk, dammit. Whatever else had changed, however much was broken, he still had that fire. Still had that choice.

And he was going to make it.

He dressed slowly. No gold shirt, just regulation black. Neutral. Detachable. Like armor. The weight of it felt strange. Foreign.

He paced. Checked the chronometer. Paged Bones once and got a barked “Not ready yet, Jim!” in reply.

Nine hours. It felt like a countdown to something bigger than a battle. Something that would require more of him than he’d ever have to give before.

And still… he couldn’t bring himself to back out.

Because Earth needed him. The Enterprise needed him.

And because if he couldn’t do that—if he weren’t someone who could be relied upon—then what the hell use was he?

Kirk sat on the edge of the bunk in the quiet of the captain’s quarters, a place he’d never been, and at the same time felt like he had known for years, floating in the weird space between familiarity and newness, his hands curled into fists in his lap.

“Okay,” he whispered to no one. “We can do this.”

He wasn’t sure who “we” meant anymore.

****************************

Spock meditated.

It was difficult.

The pain had not lessened, not really. The loss of Vulcan remained a gaping wound in his mind, raw and unhealed. In his earliest moments of silence, when he sought the stillness of logic, he was instead overwhelmed by the echo of what was no longer there—the sudden absence of voices he had never consciously known he could hear. Threads of connection, faint and ancestral, had snapped all at once. A planetary hum extinguished.

He’d never known silence to be so loud.

So many minds. So many lives. Gone.

He centered himself. Breathed. Tried again. The void howled back.

Still, beneath the grief, beneath the anger, amidst the vast gulf of chaos and pain and loss something remained.

Something small, but growing.

Hope.

It was not logical. It was not useful to the process of meditation, and yet it persisted—bright and warm and deeply unsettling. It lived in the shape of James T. Kirk’s presence within his thoughts, in that brief glimpse snatched from the meld with his older self…something less than the memory of a memory of a dream, and yet so strong, So sure; more real than real; in the electric buzz he experienced trying to restrain the man in his delirium, bright and blazing and golden; in the new and precarious idea of something greater forming between them.

He was... eager. He would not have called it that, not even to himself at first. But the sensation was undeniable. He found himself anticipating the bond—longing for it, even. It disturbed him, how deeply he wanted to feel that presence again. They hardly knew one another. They clashed more often than not. Kirk was undisciplined, reckless, emotionally volatile—everything Spock had trained himself not to be.

And yet... Kirk…Jim, already felt familiar. Safe.

The contrast disquieted him. It seemed paradoxical. He had not realized it were possible to hold such opposing truths in balance: resentment and admiration, grief and hope, distance and yearning.

He had never truly allowed himself to want something without examining it fully, without considering every angle, every possibility. But this—this thing between them—it eluded classification.

And still he wanted it.

He inhaled again, steadied the trembling current beneath his thoughts, and let the silence return.
For a moment, he imagined what it would feel like—truly feel like—to share his mind. To be understood without having to explain, to be accepted without condition. To know, and be known.

It was not something that he had known how to want, and yet now that he had had a taste…

Spock did not smile.

But his thoughts grew quieter.

**************************

Spock meditated.

He had done so for more years than most humans had been alive, and still, this time, it took effort. His body ached in ways he did not often permit himself to acknowledge. The weariness had settled into his bones, ancient and unshakable. He felt it now, a heaviness that extended beyond flesh and sinew—bleeding into memory, into spirit.

He was old. And He grieved.

Not only for Vulcan, though that grief was profound—deep as space and just as cold. His people, his culture, the singing of minds in resonance—all gone in an instant. But more than that, he grieved for time itself, for all that had been lost across the shifting current of reality. His universe, scattered like ash. His friends, distant or dead. And Jim. His Jim.

His mind brushed the memory like fingertips on ancient paper, fragile and beloved.

James T. Kirk, brilliant and infuriating. Laughing in the face of odds no sane being would accept. Breaking rules like they were glass and then dancing on the shards, getting away with it without a single scratch. Leading with his heart, always, no matter how Spock had tried to guide him otherwise. Spock had loved him for it, though he had kept the love unvoiced for far too many years.

He remembered their failures and their triumphs—the mind-bending paradoxes and the simple joys of chess and conversation. He remembered dying. He remembered Jim’s face beyond the glass. Remembered the pain—not of death, but of separation.

The bond severed.

And he remembered what Jim had done to bring him back.

It had taken time to uncover the full truth. His Jim had been reluctant to speak of it. The abject insubordination, heedless of career or reputation. That reckless, impossible journey into forbidden science, into death itself. The destruction of their ship, their home, his son…

The Genesis planet. The fal tor pan. Their reunion. The slow, uncertain rebuilding of what they’d once had, made stronger in its fragility. They had shared something rare, something vast and enduring.

And he remembered the last time they had spoken.

Jim had been irritated. “Some stupid publicity stunt,” he’d said, tugging at his uniform, as if the fabric itself were to blame. He’d kissed Spock goodbye, absentminded and familiar, a gesture long-ingrained.

Spock had watched him go, felt the thrill of the unknown echo through their bond as Jim stepped into something new—one more wild adventure.

Then silence.

A silence so absolute it had hollowed Spock from the inside out.

He had not screamed. He had simply collapsed and ceased to speak.

Or move.

For seven days.

Now, in this younger universe with its sharper edges and brighter noise, he found himself once more at the precipice of connection. Not with his Jim—but with this one. A different man. So different, and yet…

It had been so long.

And though it filled him with guilt to admit it, Spock longed for the bond again.

He told himself it was for tactical reasons. For logic. For survival. But he could not lie to himself—not after so many years with a bondmate who had taught him how to be honest with his heart.

The prickly touch of guilt washed over him.

This was not his Jim.

But it was a Jim. And it had been so long since he had not felt alone in his own mind.

Surely, his ashayam would not begrudge him this small modicum of happiness? And the young man who resembled him, did he not deserve happiness too? In a life so full of pain, how could Spock choose to not help?

There was, of course, risk.

He was well acquainted with risk. It had shaped his life—his choices, his friendships, his sacrifices. “Risk is our business,” Jim had declared once, sitting proud in the briefing room of the Enterprise, eyes alight with that dangerous, brilliant certainty. And Spock had believed him.

Spock still believed him.

But this was a different kind of risk. Not just to himself, not to the mission, but to someone else—someone so very young, so deeply scarred, and still unrelentingly human.

Jim Kirk of this timeline had endured things Spock’s Jim never had. He had endured the tragedies, the losses, the terrible, shaking loneliness of a nightmarish childhood without the anchor of those who should have protected him.

This Kirk—this resilient, ragged, fiercely burning soul—had been broken and remade so many times that Spock wasn’t certain how much of the original boy remained. And yet he kept rising, over and over, like a phoenix from ash, with defiance in his blood and fire in his eyes.

Spock prime admired him. No—more than that.
He felt awe.

With a different soul, perhaps, Spock would have feared what such a young man might become. But in this man, whose soul Spock knew like no other in the universe (or beyond), Spock saw only courage. Wounded, trembling, half-blinded by grief—but still moving. Still choosing to act, even when the choices came at the cost of his own peace.

This, too, was James T. Kirk.

And now, he had offered this. His mind. His very self. Willingly making himself the bridge between two Vulcans, and near strangers at that, offering up his autonomy like a tool to be used in the service of saving Earth. There was something so Jim in that, and yet it twisted Spock’s gut to accept it.

He hoped—deeply, fiercely—that this bond, this act, would not become another stone around the young man’s neck. That it would not become another burden that dragged him down in the days to come.

Spock folded his hands more tightly in his lap, and in the silence of his mind, whispered a vow to two men whom at the same time both were and were not his bondmate.

“I will not fail you.”

***********************

Kelvin Spock sat in stillness, legs crossed, palms open upon his knees, breathing slow and precise. Meditation had come easier this time. The presence of the elder—of himself, and yet not—had anchored him, like a tether in a sea of roiling emotion. The ache of loss remained, as did the strange sense of expansion around his heart when he thought of Jim. But now there was calm. Purpose.

The meditation ended with a shared breath. Spock prime opened his eyes, slow and deliberate, and Spock the younger mirrored him.

“I believe we are centered,” the older Vulcan said.

Spock inclined his head. “Agreed.”

But Spock prime did not move to stand. His gaze lingered, heavy with something unspoken. Spock waited, tension gathering along his spine. Then the elder spoke again.

“There is one matter we must address before the bonding proceeds.”

Spock felt his stomach tighten. “What matter?”

“Pon farr.”

The words dropped like a stone into the silence.

Spock blinked once. “I had hoped I would be spared...” still, he assimilated this new information quickly, “I have not undergone it. And with Vulcan destroyed…”

Spock prime’s voice was gentle, but firm. “I did not experience mine until my thirty-eighth year. There is a chance, however, that the presence of a T’hy’la bond may accelerate the onset, even in one so young, and particularly under extreme emotional conditions.”

Spock stared at him. His chest felt suddenly tight. “But I am only half Vulcan,” he said, though the protest sounded weak even to his own ears.

“It is a possibility we cannot afford to ignore.”

The older Spock only gave him a look of knowing sympathy, the kind that brooked no denial.

Kelvin Spock’s mind raced. This complicates everything. It is already so much—a battlefield bond, a risky psychic link with a mind under strain, a world to save—and now… Now, would this ancient biological imperative, rising with fire and need, be thrust upon him? And Jim—Jim was human. Injured. Grieving. Unprepared.

“Are you certain it shall manifest?” he asked his elder.

“Eventually, yes. One would hope that it will not be for many years yet, as it was in my time, but there are so many unknowns, there is no certainty to be had. Regardless, It would be unethical to proceed without informing him,” Spock said quietly.

Spock the younger nodded once. “Indeed. Consent must be given with full understanding. Always.”

A pause.

Spock drew a breath, steeling himself, and continued,“We should tell him…”

He was interrupted by the hissing of the doors.

Spock Prime interjected, “To co-opt a phrase from the good doctor’s lexicon, speak of the devil…”

“And he may appear,” Jim finished, slinking in, looking freshly showered, tension hanging from his shoulders like a second uniform. He glanced between the two Spocks, then raised an eyebrow.

“Tell me what?”

Spock opened his mouth, hesitated, glanced at his elder. Spock prime folded his hands in front of himself and looked entirely too composed, which Spock found deeply unhelpful.

Jim tilted his head. “What’s with the long faces?
What horrible Vulcan secret are you about to spring on me?”

Spock’s mouth went dry. Was Kirk taking this lightly? No…looking closer the man’s casualness was clearly an affectation. At least he was capable of acting in a serious manner, when the situation called for it.

“This,” Spock said, “is going to be…an awkward conversation.”

***********************
Pon Farr.

The words themselves brought on a cavalcade of feelings, memories, emotions, thoughts, and —ahem—images tromping through his battered skull. Jim had to shake his head more than a little to clear it before he could listen to the explanation properly.

What the actual—

He sat there, still slightly damp from the shower, hair sticking up in half-dried tufts, listening to two versions of the same Vulcan explain—in calm, clinical tones—what amounted to a spontaneous, possibly unavoidable, chemically-induced Vulcan heat cycle. With consequences. Biological urgency. Intensity. Bond-driven imperatives. Apparently, it happened every seven years.

Jim raised a hand to stop them. “Wait. Wait. Are you telling me that if this bond works, and we all survive the next twenty-four hours, I might have to—what, go on a sex marathon with two Spocks?”

Proper Universe Spock actually looked faintly uncomfortable, which was, frankly, the most reassuring part of this whole conversation.

Spock Prime inclined his head. “Only if the bond strengthens to a certain depth and… should circumstances align—”

“Okay! Okay.” Jim held up both hands. “Got it. Mental link, emergency telepathy relay, possibly followed by… Vulcan mating season. Cool. Coolcoolcool. Just gonna… file that away for later.”

This was not one of the revelations he had been braced for.

“The chances of such a thing occurring are quite small,” the younger, slightly green tinged copy of Spock concluded.

Jim stared off into space for a long second. A Vulcan sex death spiral. Neat.

Focus.

Not relevant now. Not when Earth was under threat, and Nero’s ship was waiting like a loaded weapon pointed at the heart of the Federation. Not when he still had to get onto the Narada and do a thousand things just right or die trying.
They had nine hours, give or take, and most of that would be spent trying to keep everything from falling apart.

Still. His mind, traitorous as ever, poked at the possibilities.

Two Spocks.

Two.

He shoved the thought firmly aside. “Look, if we don’t live through this, it won’t matter. And if we do—well. I guess we’ll…cross that burning-hot Vulcan bridge when we come to it.”

There was a pause.

“…Wow,” Jim muttered, mostly to himself.

The door slid open and Bones strode in like he owned the place—which, technically, this being sickbay, he did. He had a small medscanner in one hand and a bio-monitor patch in the other.
Without preamble, he slapped the patch on Jim’s neck.

“Hey!” Jim objected, belatedly. “You could warn a guy.”

Bones glanced at the monitor, brows rising slowly as he read the initial vitals. His mouth twitched in that dangerous way it did right before delivering a punchline that was both an insult and deeply concerned. “Really, Jim?”

Jim blinked, feigned innocence, then glanced down at himself, mentally willing his heart rate to drop and his body to chill out. Unfortunately, his physiology had other plans. He wasn't going to explain to Bones—or the Spocks standing behind him, one politely inscrutable, the other visibly chagrined —that his brain had taken a detour into very specific speculative territory involving incense, shared mental links, and post-crisis intimacy.

He coughed and didn’t meet anyone’s eye. “It’s the… anticipation. Of the mission.”

“Sure it is,” Bones muttered, shooting him a look that made it clear he wasn’t buying a word of it. He turned to the two Vulcans and adopted his professional voice, the one that carried a carefully masked undercurrent of you’d better not fuck this up. “The quarantine room’s ready. I’ve cleared it of all pathogens, set up additional monitors, and even found you some damn cushions. Chapel unpacked the incense and that—fire pot thing.” He waved vaguely in the air, clearly refusing to dignify it with its real name.

Spock Prime inclined his head solemnly. “You have our gratitude, Doctor.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Bones stepped closer, fixing him with a look that had made admirals snap to attention. “You hurt him—either of you”—he pointed at the elder Spock in particular —“and I don’t care what century you’re from, I will end you.”

Spock Prime didn’t blink. “I assure you, should he come to any harm, Doctor, your intervention will no longer be required.”

Bones made a noise that might’ve been a growl. “Well that’s just real comforting, thanks.”

He turned back to Jim and sighed, softening. “Take care of yourself, kid.”

Jim, because he couldn’t resist, gave him an exaggerated thumbs-up. “Will do, Dad.”

Bones threw his hands in the air. “That’s not funny, Jim! This is serious!”

And Jim grinned, because Bones was mad, and when Bones was mad, he wasn’t terrified. Not entirely, anyway.

“See you in a few hours,” Jim said, moving with the Vulcans. “Try not to pace a hole in the floor while we’re gone.”

Bones muttered something under his breath that definitely included “damn fool,” “pointy-eared bastards,” and “worst patient in the quadrant.”
Which, to Jim’s ear, meant I love you, don’t die.

Jim turned back at the threshold and hesitated for just a second. Dropping his jovial demeanor, he let just a tiny bit of his real feelings bleed through. Just a smidgin of his hope, terror, worry, and yes, love that he was all but bursting out of him. Decisively, he crossed the room in three quick steps and flung his arms around the closest thing he had to a brother left in this world.

It wasn’t a casual slap-on-the-back hug. It was a full-body, hold-you-tight, not sure I really want to ever let you go kind of hug, the kind that didn’t leave any room for pretending this wasn’t dangerous as hell. One that Jim hoped Bones could tell that he really meant. For a heartbeat, Bones just stood there, stiff as a board. Then his arms came up slowly, wrapping around Jim with a soul-deep weariness he didn’t bother to hide.

“I’ll be okay,” Jim rumbled quietly, voice warm against Bones’ collar. It was confident, but not cocky. A promise he needed to make, and maybe even believed. Almost.

Bones didn’t say anything for a moment. He just held him there, and if he felt the slight tremble running through Jim’s frame—barely noticeable he hoped, but there, he didn’t mention it. Just closed his eyes and rested a hand against the back of Jim’s head like he did with his daughter the day he left Joanna in Georgia for the last time. The day before he got rip-roaringly drunk and met some dumb kid on a transport shuttle.

“You’d better be,” Bones muttered roughly, clearing his throat. His hand gave a final squeeze before he pulled away.

Jim nodded, jaw tight, eyes dry. “I will.”

Spock Prime stood just outside the doorway, patient and quiet as the grave. The younger Spock stood behind him, straight-backed and focused, though his eyes kept flicking toward Jim.

With one last look back, Jim turned and joined them. The door slid shut behind the three of them with a soft hiss.

Bones stared at it long after they were gone.

Chapter Text

The room was quiet. Not in the sterile, echoing way most medbay annexes were, but...something. It had the same brand-new never-used feeling that most of the Enterprise had. It was small and Jim could jut barely feel the thrumming of the warp core that reverberated throughout the ship.

His Ship.

But for now, he was alone in what amounted to a supply closet with two Vulcans, accompanied by the soft crackle of a holographic firepot flickering in the corner like it thought it could pretend to be comforting.

All of a sudden, it felt real.

Once the door had swished shut behind him, he felt his muscles tense.

He was trapped.

No, not trapped. Not really. He could leave. Any time. They’d let him. That’s what they’d said. This was not just his choice, it was his idea. Regardless, his skin still buzzed with that telltale static of being cornered, as if the walls were a little too close. Like the air didn’t move quite as freely.

There was a mark on the floor where a biobed must have been anchored. Just a rectangular impression cornered by four tiny holes in the carpet.

Bones must’ve had it removed. Thank God. If he’d had to lie back on one of those sterile slabs while two people leaned over him and started digging around in his mind—well. He shut his eyes at the thought. This was going to be hard enough as it was.

Someone —Chapel perhaps —had tried to make it look... comfortable. As comfortable as a quarantine suite could be, anyway. A scatter of mismatched cushions had been tossed across the floor. Some were regulation Starfleet. Others looked like they’d been pulled from a lounge or a forgotten officer’s couch. It was weirdly domestic.

Jim wasn’t sure if that helped.

The firepot wasn’t just for show. It glowed a warm amber, letting off the faint scent of whatever Vulcan incense the younger Spock had brought aboard. It smelled of neither antiseptic nor mold.

That did help.

Somewhat.

Kirk lingered there for a moment longer, feeling vaguely like someone about to walk into their own surprise party. Just... without the party. Or the surprise. Or the people.

He cleared his throat. “So. How exactly are we gonna do this?”

Normal Spock disappeared for a few seconds and came back bearing something that sort of resembled a tall barstool, only the seat was shaped like that of a bicycle and had padded supports so that one could effectively kneel while remaining upright .

Huh. Neat.

“These were used for meditation in the katric ark. It allowed elders to commune without overwhelming their joints…” young Spock supplied as explanation. It looked old. Jim wondered if any others like it had survived the destruction of Vulcan.

Spock Prime ushered him forward with his usual deliberate calm, hands folded neatly in front, partly hidden by his voluminous sleeves. “You will perch here. I shall place myself behind you. Spock will be in front.”

Jim swallowed nervously before nodding.

“The goal is to create a balanced triad of contact—physical and telepathic.” The old man inclined his head slightly. “You will not be touched unless you permit it.”

Kirk gave another short nod.

Spock Prime continued, “Each of us will initiate contact on one side of your face. This method will allow for gradual synchrony of neural patterns rather than a sudden influx, which may overwhelm your cognitive function. I will act as the stabilizing intermediary.”

Kirk blinked. “So you’re the grounding wire.”

Spock Prime’s mouth twitched. “A fair approximation.”

Kirk looked at the stool, the cushions, the firepot, and lastly, the Vulcans.

Then he laughed, short and a little shaky. “You guys really go all in with atmosphere, don’t you?”

The younger Spock tilted his head. “Sensory coherence is beneficial to mental clarity.”

“Right. Of course.” Kirk ran a hand through his nearly dried hair. His skin still prickled a little, but the worst of the panic had passed.

He exhaled. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

He stepped forward and sat down between them.

And waited.

Kirk sat down slowly on the stool? Chair?—if it could be called sitting. He lowered himself like someone lowering onto a live wire. His shoulders were tense, his knees stiff. His fingers fidgeted once in his lap before he caught himself and stilled them. His knees rested upon the supports which allowed him to curl his ankles somewhat beneath him. It was a surprisingly comfortable perch once you got the hang of it.

The warp core rumbled in the distance.

He tried to put down the feeling of being on display. Too exposed.

Too warm.

He hated how small he felt.

Spock Prime moved first. Respectfully making certain that he remained in Jim’s view until the last. He slipped around behind Kirk. Jim could sense the man at his back though they were not yet touching. Spock settled with a care that made no sound. Kirk tensed anyway. His breath hitched as he felt the Vulcan's presence at his back, close but with a small separation remaining.

"May I?" Spock Prime asked, his voice low, even.

Kirk nodded.

There was a pause. “Jim,” Spock Prime said gently. “I will not proceed without your voice.”

Kirk swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, hoarsely. “Go ahead.”

A longer pause. Then he felt it—a touch, just above his sternum, Spock Prime's right arm coming slowly, carefully around his torso. Not trapping. Not restraining.

Just...holding.

The contact was warm. Solid. The forearm lay lightly across his abdomen, anchoring him without pressure. The hand rested over his heart. Kirk sucked in a breath, but didn’t flinch.

"This is the anchor. You are quite safe," Spock Prime assured him.

Kirk tried to believe it.

“Are you prepared to continue?” Spock asked.

Jim heard his voice answer with a simple “yes.”

The elder Vulcan reached forward with ceremonial precision. His hand cupped the left side of Kirk’s face—not flat, but poised, his fingers splaying over key psi-points with trained accuracy. The index and middle fingers rested along Kirk’s temple and cheekbone, the ring and little finger curved gently toward his jaw. His thumb angled up, pressing lightly just below Kirk’s eyebrow, near the edge of the forehead. The touch was dry, cool, and shockingly intimate.

Kirk shivered violently.

“I will initiate a light meld only,” Spock Prime said. “If at any time you wish me to stop, say the word.”

“…Okay,” Kirk breathed.

The meld began as a whisper—just a breeze at the edge of his mind. Not like the last time, the overwhelming flood of foreign presence. This was controlled. Soft. Inviting.

“Different fingers this time,” Kirk thought distantly.

“The position is what matters,” came the instant, nonverbal reply from Prime, calm and deep, the voice of a canyon filled with light.

He had just barely managed to keep from flinching when he felt it. Not the full press of thought-to-thought. Not yet. Just the sensation of someone brushing against the surface of his consciousness. A warmth, a shimmer, like the first hint of sunrise behind closed eyes.

Kirk clenched his fists in his lap. He forced them to remain still, struggling with the strong urge to reach up and pry Spock’s fingers from his face. His breathing came sharp through his nose. Not trapped. Not a lab. This is not Tarsus. Not Delta Vega. You're not thirteen. You're not alone.

“Jim, if it is too much…,” Spock Prime said quietly, mind-to-mind, and Kirk felt the concern and respect layered with the thought as if it had been his own.

“Keep going,” he sent back, determined.

The warmth steadied.

The second Spock stepped forward now, moving into Kirk’s line of sight. He did not assume anything, only holding Kirk’s gaze.

“Permission to initiate contact, Captain?” he asked, voice lower than usual, almost gentle.

Kirk swallowed once.

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

The younger Spock extended his left hand, mirror to the elder’s. Slowly, he placed it against the right side of Kirk’s face. Thumb resting near the temple, two fingers aligning over the psi points near his eye and jawline. The contact sent a spark up Kirk’s spine, and this time the tension in his chest cracked. His hands gripped the stool’s edges. The panic crawled forward again, trying to claw out of his throat.

“Jim,” came Prime’s voice, internal and steady. “You do not have to…”

Jim let slip a wordless pulse of frustration and self recrimination before reining it in.

He focused. Relaxed. Then he let them in.

Kelvin Spock entered lightly, barely a shimmer at first, and then—yes—he was there too. Now there were two presences brushing against him. Two currents in the tide, one ancient and vast, the other sharp and young and so achingly familiar

Kirk gritted his teeth. He was breathing like he'd just finished a sprint. He wanted—desperately—to tear himself free and bolt. But instead, he forced himself to focus. On the hands. On the warmth. On the lack of pain.

“Don’t stop,” he insisted. “Please—just…go. Just do it.”

Kelvin Spock gave a single, minute nod. Then Kirk felt it. The second presence was lighter, younger, filled with that complicated mix of restraint and intensity that defined the man in front of him. Two minds now brushed his own. Neither probing, neither pushing. Just there. Like open hands waiting.

Spock Prime’s voice came again, this time both inside and outside his mind.

“Jim. May I initiate the bond?”

Kirk’s pulse thundered in his ears. His body felt like a taut wire stretched over a flame. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream, but he also wanted…somewhere deep down where he didn’t like to look, he longed…not to be alone anymore.

His voice shook when it came, but the words were clear.

“Do it.”

And then the world fell away.

Kirk dropped like a stone into the depths of his own mind.

Jim hit the deck hard.

The screaming of red alert klaxons drowned out nearly everything else. Steam hissed from ruptured vents. Sparks lit up the haze like fireflies, and the air tasted of ozone and panic.

“Containment breach in the dilithium chamber. Contamination detected. Core unstable.”

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere—male, warm, oddly comforting despite the dire message. If Kirk had thought about it he would have noticed how different the voice sounded from the Enterprise’s usual AI.

Kirk didn’t have time to think about it.

The ship was in crisis.

He staggered to his feet, slipping slightly on the scorched flooring of Engineering. Everything was chaos—light flickering, shadows moving across the walls like ghosts. The panels were torn open, conduits hanging like entrails. Everywhere, frayed and spliced bundles of wire crisscrossed the surfaces. Scorch marks and soldering marred the clean lines of the bulkhead.

A Scottish accented memory floated by before he could focus on it,

"The energizer's bypassed like a Christmas tree, so don't give me too many bumps."

The lack of context made it all the more baffling.

If he had been awake, Jim would have realized that the core looked…off. Smaller, sleeker, a cylindrical column stretching from floor to ceiling, the insides pulsing with barely controlled energy.

Nothing like the core he knew.

Instead, a voice caught his attention, younger, raw and furious.

“Damn it, come on—!”

Kirk turned and froze.

There, crouched in front of the open core housing, was a boy. Skinny. Barefoot. Covered in healing wounds, old scars, and fresh bruises. His greasy blond hair was raggedly cut. His hands were blackened from repeated burns, trembling but still working. He was trying—trying—to dig something out of the core’s matrix.

With his bare hands.

Whatever was inside, it was gumming up the whole system.

Kirk took a step forward. “Hey—wait—”

The boy screamed as the energy flared, burning his palms again. Still, he reached back in.

This was madness. Kirk ran to the console, fingers operating controls he didn’t remember learning. Sparks exploded out of the adjacent panel and three whole sections of wall went dark.

There were more important things to worry about than a few blown systems.

“Emergency containment field. Online.” The oddly familiar voice intoned.

A golden shimmer burst into existence, shoving the boy gently but firmly backward.

“Containment achieved,” the computer voice intoned calmly. “Core instability persists. Recommend proceeding to command deck.”

The boy hit the floor and snarled. “You bastard! I almost had it!”

Kirk knelt beside him. “You were going to burn your hands off.”

“I don’t care,” the boy raged. “If I don’t get it out, the whole ship—everything—goes up!”

Jim gawked at the boy. For some reason, all he could think to say was “That’s not your job!”

“Nobody else is gonna fix it!” The child snarled back, glaring with a ferocity that was beyond his apparent years.

Kirk stared. One of the boy’s eyes was blue. The other, hazel.

The ship shuddered violently—the vibrations emanating from somewhere outside the core.

“External impact detected. Shields holding. Foreign contact attempting override.”

Kirk braced himself, gazing up through the flickering overhead.

It felt like a war from above.

Something—someone—was trying to breach the ship from the outside. Energy flares lashed the hull, making the bulkheads groan. He could feel it in his teeth.

The boy scrambled up, hands still trembling.

“We don’t have time!”

Kirk grabbed his wrist—not harshly, but firmly.

“We’re not fixing anything down here like this. We’ve got to get to the bridge.”

The kid hesitated, panting, bleeding, terrified. Then he nodded once and followed Jim out.

They moved through the ship, Kirk ahead, the boy trailing like a shadow that didn’t want to be caught.

Smoke clung to the corridors like memory—thin, acrid, familiar. Warning lights pulsed low and steady. The klaxons had quieted, but the walls still vibrated with distant, rhythmic impacts. The ship was still under assault.

Halfway to the lift, Kirk slowed. He glanced over his shoulder. “Let me see your hands.”

The boy froze. “They’re fine.”

Kirk held out his own, open, non-threatening.

“Let me see.”

“No,” the kid refused, eyes wide. He clutched his scorched appendages to his chest.

Kirk waited. Just stood there. After a long beat, the boy exhaled and reluctantly, grudgingly, held them out.

His palms were raw and bleeding. Scabbed layers pulled back from fresh burns, skin trying—struggling—to knit itself together again. It wasn’t healing right. The process was happening, but slow, painful. Almost like the body was fixing itself without permission.
Kirk watched in silence as cells glowed faintly, stitching and twitching. It must have been excruciating, but the boy made no sound.

After a beat, the kid snatched his hands back like he’d been slapped. “See? Told you it was fine.”

Something nudged Kirk’s awareness—not a voice, but a thought, half-formed and old.

"Fine has variable definitions."

He didn’t say it out loud. He just nodded and turned toward the lift.

The doors whooshed open, and suddenly they were on the bridge.

It was quiet here. No crew. No sound but the soft beeping of controls left unattended. The red alert was still blinking, but slower, like a heartbeat easing after exertion.

Standing before the main viewscreen, was a man.

He wore an unfamiliar Starfleet uniform, a maroon monstrosity that had an asymmetrical lapel over what appeared to be a crisp white turtleneck. It looked rather smart, if uncomfortable. The Captain’s rank stripes on the sleeves completed the look, somehow giving the impression of being simultaneously brand new and charmingly old fashioned at the same time. His hands were clasped behind his back. He didn’t move at first. Just stood there, watching.

On the screen: two Vulcan ships, sleek and elegant, hung in space like silver daggers.

Beams of golden energy lashed out from them, striking at the metaphorical hull of Kirk’s mind.

Each time the beams touched the ship, the vessel shuddered violently.

They looked like tractor beams—but they couldn’t lock on.

Couldn’t get in.

The man at the viewscreen spoke, voice dry and lightly amused.

“Took you long enough.”

He turned around.

It was himself, but not.

James T. Kirk, older, Sixty, maybe. Hair gone mostly gray, more curl than it had sported in his youth, but still proud. His hazel eyes were sharp. He flashed a smirk on lips that didn’t quite counter the lines of grief etched into his face.

The boy next to Kirk stepped closer without realizing, eyes wide. “Is that…?”

Kirk didn’t answer. His throat felt tight. Like he was looking at a reflection in time that remembered things he hadn’t lived yet.

The ship shuddered again.

The elder Kirk glanced at the screen. “They’re trying to reach you, you know. Been at it a while.”

Jim’s own voice was rough. “It feels like they’re trying to tear me apart.”

“Yeah,” Kirk Prime said. “That’s what it feels like, doesn’t it?”

They all stared at the viewscreen. The two Vulcan ships continued their efforts, tractor beams shimmering gold against the void. The ship trembled with every attempt.

“They can’t get through,” he muttered.

“They’re not the problem,” Kirk Prime said, calmly. “The shields are.”

Jim stiffened. Behind him, the boy froze.

“What?” Kirk asked, not because he hadn’t heard—but because he didn’t want to believe it.

“You’ve got to drop them,” confirmed the elder captain. “It’s the only way this works.”

“No.” The boy’s voice cut in—high and sharp, knotted with panic. “No, no, no, no—”

He bolted for the weapons console.

“Hey—!” Jim lunged after him, grabbing the kid around the middle just as the smaller body slammed fingers against the phaser controls. The console sparked but didn’t fire—safeties kicked in. Still, the child twisted like a wild thing, biting, scratching, elbowing blindly.

“You can’t! They’re trying to hurt us! You can’t let them in!” the boy shrieked.

Kirk tightened his grip and dragged him back, away from the console, down onto the floor, cradling him tightly from behind. The boy fought with everything he had, panting and sobbing and wailing through gritted teeth.

“They’re not hurting you,” Kirk said, breath ragged, “they’re trying to help.”

“They’re not! You don’t know! That’s what they always say! You don’t know what it felt like—”

The boy bit down hard on Kirk’s arm, sobbing again, “—it’s not FAIR—”

“I know,” Kirk said hoarsely. He held on, as steady as he could. The boy was shaking. “I know.”

The fight went out of the kid all at once. He crumpled, body shivering, small hands clutching fistfuls of Kirk’s uniform. “It hurts. It HURTS.”

Kirk pressed his forehead against the boy’s hair and rocked them both slightly. “Yeah,” he admitted. “It’s not fair. It hurts.”

The boy sobbed harder, curled against him.

“Make it stop. Please—please just make it stop—”

God, how many times had he wanted to say those same words?

“I wish I could,” Kirk said softly, honestly. “I wish I could take it away. But… some scars you don’t get to lose. You just learn how to live with them.”

The boy hiccupped a breath. “How?”

Kirk didn’t answer right away.

Then: “Still working on that part.”

He pulled the boy a little closer.

“But I promise—we’re going to find a way. Not to erase it. But to make it okay. We will find a way to live with this. Together.”

The ship gave a smaller tremor—but this one wasn’t pain. It was something else.

The command chair sat empty. Beckoning.

The ship’s tremors had eased to a low hum, as if it were holding its breath, waiting.

Kirk brushed a hand over the boy’s hair one last time, then gently turned him by the shoulders.

“Go on,” he said. “Attend to your post.”

The boy blinked up at him, eyes red-rimmed, face still blotchy from crying. “But—what if it happens again?”

“It will,” Kirk said, not unkindly. “And we’ll deal with it then. Right now, you’ve got a job to do.”

For a moment, the boy hesitated. Then he nodded—stubbornly —and made his way across the bridge to the science station. His feet didn’t quite reach the floor once he climbed into the chair, but his fingers moved over the console like he belonged there. Like he was trying.

Adult Kirk straightened and turned to look at the command chair. It sat empty—quiet, patient, like it was waiting for something.

He glanced at Kirk Prime.

The older man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, watching the stars out the main viewer. The Vulcan ships still hovered there—tractor beams flickering against invisible resistance.

Kirk gestured toward the chair. “Aren’t you going to take it?”

Kirk Prime turned to him with a wry smile. “Not my ship,” he said. “I’m just here in a support capacity.”

Kirk’s throat tightened. That was the thing, wasn’t it? This had always been his ship. His mind. His pain. His bridge.

He stepped forward.

The chair greeted him like an old friend.

And then he sat.

The lights flickered overhead as the ship gave another low, protesting groan. Somewhere, deep in the decks below, a system rerouted power with a shuddering sigh. The red alert klaxons had gone silent, but the weight of tension still hung in the air.

Kirk leaned forward in the command chair, fingers drumming once on the armrest.

“Status report,” he said.

The boy—his younger self—looked up from the science station. His legs still didn’t reach the floor, but his posture was more solid now, more focused. “Communications are still down,” the kid said. “But I’m trying to recalibrate.”

“Good.” Kirk nodded once. “Run a scan on the Vulcan ships. I want to know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

The boy tapped quickly at the console. The readout blinked up across the bridge’s displays, blue and gold against the soft glow of the main viewer.

“They’re… the same ship,” the boy said, frowning. “Identical design, same specs, but—” he squinted, then looked back at Jim, “—one of them is brand new. Fresh off the line. And the other’s… old. Really old.”

Kirk narrowed his eyes at the screen. “That’s… strange,” he muttered.

“They’re baiting us,” the boy added quietly, eyes darting nervously. “They’re gonna fire. I know it.”

Kirk Prime shifted where he stood beside the viewscreen, arms still folded behind his back. He raised a single eyebrow.

“What do you think, Jim?”

Kirk looked between the ships. Watched the tractor beams licking over the outer shields like gentle waves brushing a hull.

“If they wanted to hurt us,” he said slowly, “they would’ve done it by now.”

Kirk Prime nodded. “I concur.”

The older man stepped aside just slightly, giving Jim a clearer view of the screen, the console, the power waiting at his fingertips.

“Your orders, Captain?”

Kirk took a breath. Held it. Then—

“Lower shields, Mr. Kirk.”

The boy at the console turned to gape at him, eyes wide. For just a second, the child looked like he might refuse. But then his jaw set, and he gave a sharp, brave little nod.

“Aye, sir.”

Slim fingers danced over the panel.

The ship stopped shaking.

The beams from the Vulcan ships locked on, not like weapons, but like lifelines. Stabilizing.

Supporting. Containing.

The surging of the warp core deep in the ship’s heart began to settle. A new light spread through the bridge—warm, steady, calm.

The console chirped under the boy’s fingers.

“Captain,” he said, startled, “I’m detecting a transporter signal—originating from both ships.”

Jim stood from the command chair, not with fear, but with caution coiled in his spine. The viewscreen dimmed slightly as two familiar gold shimmers began to take form in the center of the bridge.

“Let it through,” he ordered.

The transporter hum filled the space like a deep breath taken by the ship itself. Then, two figures resolved—tall, composed, unmistakably Vulcan. One wore a pristine modern Starfleet uniform, sharply pressed and bearing the insignia of this era. The other stood slightly more stooped with age, clad in long robes the color of desert stone, his bearing calm and vast as an open sky.

Both raised one eyebrow in tandem.

“Fascinating,” they said in unison.

Jim blinked. Something in his mind stuttered, a tug he almost remembered, like the echo of a half-forgotten dream. But in the moment, all he saw were two strange Vulcans materializing on his bridge. Two Vulcans who, somehow, felt… familiar in a way that made his breath catch without knowing why.

The boy at the console hissed under his breath and shrank a little, glancing nervously at Jim.
Jim held up a hand to him without looking away from the newcomers.

“It’s alright,” he said. “What is your purpose for boarding this vessel?”

Kelvin Spock tilted his head. Spock Prime folded his hands behind his back.

“We are not intruders, Captain,” the older one said gently. “We are here at your request, though you may not remember doing so.”

“I didn’t call anyone,” Jim said, jaw set.

“You did,” said the younger Spock, voice steady. “It was, in fact, your idea.”

Jim’s gaze flicked to the view screen. The Vulcan ships were still there, tractor beams still wrapped around the hull, now glowing brighter—as if they were resonating with something inside the ship, inside him.

Jim turned back to face the two Vulcans. “Who are you?”

The older one smiled faintly, like a sunrise barely lifting the horizon. “We are…we wish to become…part of what comes next.”

Jim didn’t understand. But the hull no longer groaned in protest, the beams cradling it gently in the blackness of space.

Suddenly, the lights flickered. The deck pitched sideways. A deep groan echoed through the hull—low, pained, unnatural.

“Containment field failing,” said the warm, steady voice of the computer—his father’s voice.

“Urgent action required.”

The boy flinched. Adult Jim snapped his head toward the sound, recognition sparking behind his eyes but refusing to come forward.

On the bridge, Kirk Prime turned sharply toward him. “What are we waiting for?” he said.
And just like that—

They were in Engineering again.

No transition. No flash. No time to adjust. Just there.

The five of them—Jim, the boy, Kirk Prime, and both Spocks—now stood facing the core.

A core that was in no way stable. Not even close.

The containment field flickered violently, its edges crawling like static over glass. The air crackled thickly with ozone and heat. The central dilithium chamber pulsed with a sickly red-blue light, and deep, deep within the heart of it, something squeezed and festered —something dark, twisted, writhing like vines or tendrils of shadow, digging into the structure, as though the core itself were locked in a battle with its own infection.

Jim took a breath but it stuck in his throat. It felt alive, as if the ship were breathing through gritted teeth, like the thing in the core was fighting back against any attempt to heal it.

The boy took one stumbling step forward before Jim grabbed his arm.

“No. Stay here.”

“But—!”

“You already tried, remember?” Jim crouched slightly, meeting the kid’s mismatched eyes.

“You don’t have to let it hurt you.”

Kirk Prime stepped beside them. “It’s old,” he said, eyes on the core. “Deep. Whatever that is, it’s been there a long time.”

“It hurts,” the boy whispered. “It always hurts.”

The younger Spock stepped forward next, his gaze fixed and calm despite the chaos.

“We must stabilize it,” he said. “Together.”

Spock Prime joined him, folding his hands. “It will not be easy. This… infestation is woven deeply into the core's functioning. Ripping it out by force would destroy the entire system.”

Jim looked at them, then at the core again, still pulsing, groaning, snarling.

“So what do we do?” he asked.

Kirk Prime placed a hand on Jim’s shoulder.

“We don’t rip it out,” he said. “We don’t fight it at all. It’s not the enemy.”

“Then what?”

“We integrate,” said Spock Prime. “We contain, not reject. Accept, not erase.”

The other Spock met Jim’s eyes.

“You have to let us in. All the way in.”

Jim stared at the writhing shadows in the chamber.

"...And if I can’t?"

The boy was quiet, watching him.

Kirk Prime's voice was gentle.

“Then the core fails. The ship breaks apart. And all of us—you—stay stuck in this moment forever.”

The lights dimmed again. The computer repeated, voice softer now, almost sad:

“Containment failure imminent. Please… act.”

Jim searched the shadows. Looked at the boy. Considered the Spocks.

He swallowed.

The core loomed before him pulsing like a second heart—raw, radiant, diseased.

Light and shadow tangled within it, choking each other like mortal enemies in an eternal duel. The warped metal of the dilithium chamber screamed against the strain, as if the ship itself knew it couldn’t hold much longer. The containment field—already lashing out like a failing dam—flickered violently with each surge.

Jim saw it clearly now:

If he kept it contained, it would rupture—splinter the ship from within, tear the hull apart atom by atom. But if he released it...

The darkness would escape. Not vanish—spread.

It would flood the compartment, surge like fire across the deck, into the consoles, the systems, the walls. Into them.

Into the Spocks.

Jim staggered backward. “You need to go,” he warned them, voice tight, terrified. “You haven’t been touched by it yet. You don’t—this thing, it’s in me. In all of us.”

The boy—his younger self—stood silent at his side, eyes wide and haunted. Kirk Prime was calm, arms folded, patient. Waiting.

The Spock in blue stepped forward. “We are aware of the risk.”

“You don’t understand!” Jim shouted. “It’ll touch you. I don’t even know what it’ll do to you—”

Spock Prime’s voice was quiet, grave. “We came prepared to accept the consequences.”

“You shouldn’t have to carry this—”

Kelvin Spock interrupted gently. “You are correct. We do not have to. We choose to.”

That stopped him.

The ship shuddered. Sparks rained from the ceiling.

The core pulsed again—angrier now, desperate.

The light and shadow weren’t fighting anymore—they were devouring each other.

Jim turned to his younger self.

The boy’s shoulders were slumped, his hands still healing, still trembling. But he met Jim’s eyes and gave a tiny, broken nod. Defeated.

He turned to Kirk Prime.

The older man’s eyes were warm. Proud.

“Time to be the captain,” Prime said. “Not just of the ship.”

Jim squared his shoulders.

He stepped forward. The control panel glowed under his hand.

“Remove containment field.” His voice was firm, sure, shaking only at the very end.

“Authorization Kirk, James T—Alpha One.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then the computer, still calm, still somehow loving:

“Authorization accepted.”

The field fell.

And all that the core was, the light, the dark, and everything in between, came rushing out.

Chapter Text

The containment field shimmered once, then dissolved—soundlessly—like a soap bubble caught in sunlight.

As it fell, all the individuals in the room held their breath.

The core didn’t explode.

It breathed for them.

The warped, writhing fusion of light and shadow inside the chamber swelled outward, bleeding into the air with an aching slowness. The heat hit first—not fire, but memory: raw, burning recollections that carried grief, rage, humiliation, abandonment, and helplessness like radiation thrown off by a particularly temperamental star.

The feelings radiated outward in waves that engulfed all five men standing in Engineering.

The boy gasped. The adult Kirk flinched. Prime staggered a step.

The younger Spock closed his eyes—but did not move.
Spock Prime knelt. He opened himself to it.
They didn’t burn.

They braced, not against the storm, but with it.
The shadows didn’t flee them—they touched them. They ran fingers of despair and white-hot panic across Vulcan calm. The pain of starving and still choosing to be kind. The memory of bruises that had to be hidden under uniforms. The sting of needles and the fires of creation. The echo of an empty lab, a child’s weeping through walls, and the slimy satisfaction of a madman. Everything Jim had sealed away in his core—was now seeping into them, a miasma of pain and heartbreak that could scarce be borne.

There was light too. The golden glow of an Iowan sunset, the frigid sparkling of a winter’s sky, a lavender shampoo that went out of production years ago. The triumph of a chess piece sliding into checkmate and the skeleton of a starship at dawn.

weaving through every bit of it, a yearning for connection that ached to be fulfilled.

Spock Prime felt it settle in his chest like a forgotten dream. The younger Spock felt it sting behind his eyes like unshed tears he had no context for. For a moment, both Spocks breathed with him—ragged, human, and mortal.

And then the core began to change.
The writhing darkness inside didn’t disappear, but it re-formed.

The Light wrapped around it. Some of it had been there all along, but more of it seemed to burst into being when it touched the two Spocks. There was some additional darkness too, more from the elder—The brightness fought the dark—not banishing it, but reshaping it. The fusion reaction settled into something… harmonizing.

Not healed, but held.

The core turned golden-white and crimson. Still scarred. Still painful. But alive.

Jim turned in the chamber’s new glow. The boy slumped quietly beside him now—quiet, but not cowering. His hands weren’t bleeding anymore.

The Spocks looked at him—not with pity, not with fear. Just understanding.
And Jim felt, for the first time in years, seen.

The voice—his father’s—spoke again:

“Containment stabilized. Core integrity: acceptable.”

One by one, the panels and the interface consoles began to come back online, stable, but barely. The whole system hung in the air like a suncatcher, fragile and sharp.

The golden light pulsed, low and rhythmic, from the reformed warp core—no longer cracking with instability but glowing like a heart. Jim’s heart. Or maybe all of theirs. Instead of shining out, it seemed to pull in, as if waiting for something.

The boy took a step forward, squinting into the light. He looked... lighter. Still him, still bruised and wary, but lighter—as if the air no longer pressed quite so cruelly against his ribs. His small hand reached for the core—then hesitated.
His mismatched eyes turned to the adult version of himself.

“Will it hurt?” he asked.

Jim knelt beside him. “Yes,” he said, honest and gentle. “But not like before.”

“Will I be alone?”

“No.” The Kirk in the red uniform answered, coming to kneel on the other side of the boy. He looked over his shoulder at the two Vulcans, haloed in shifting white and gold. “You won’t ever be alone again.”

The boy looked at them too, unsure. His gaze flicked between them, then down to his hands. Then, with visible effort, he pressed his palm flat to the surface of the glowing chamber.

A flare of light burst outward—blinding, but silent. It didn’t burn. It connected.

Across the room, golden filaments shot out like sunbeams—not from the chamber, but from within Kirk himself—all parts of him—threading outward like living veins of starlight. They reached both Spocks and touched their foreheads, right over their meld points.

The light landed upon them.

And both Vulcans shuddered. Spock Prime gasped softly. Kelvin Spock’s knees buckled and he caught himself.

They were still Vulcan, still themselves—but now something else flowed beneath their skin. A thread of heat, wildness, grief, hope. Something human. Something Kirk.

And in Kirk’s mind, for the first time, there were two presences. Not hovering. Not invasive.

Warm. Inviting.

Safe.

Anchored, they burned quietly in the corner of his psyche—steady and strong. Like hearth fires banked for a long winter.

He knew, without knowing how he knew, that he could find them in the dark now. And they could find him.

“Neural convergence complete,” the voice intoned—his father’s voice again, warm and grounded.
“Bond formed. Status: Stable. Status: Mutual.”

The boy withdrew his hand and stepped back. The golden filaments retracted—but their presence lingered like warmth on skin after sun.

The boy looked up at Jim. “Does that mean we’re okay?”

Jim hesitated.

“We will be,” he said.

The boy nodded. He looked at the two Spocks again. This time, he didn’t flinch.

The golden light from the core dimmed to a steady thrum—no longer burning, no longer begging to be held back. It simply was. Alive. Controlled. Whole.

Jim stood slowly, feeling the strange gravity of calm settle over him—not peace, not yet, but the space where peace might someday take shape.

The older him glanced toward the turbolift doors.

Without needing to speak, they opened.

The bridge awaited.

It was familiar and not. The lines of the consoles curved like memory. The viewscreen showed not stars, but something deeper—mindspace, or perhaps soulspace—where thought, instinct, and feeling blurred together like a nebula at warp.

He stepped onto the bridge.

Behind him, the boy walked a half-step slower, now quiet. Wary still, but not resisting. The boy didn’t cling. He didn’t hide. He walked to the science console and stood beside it—not touching, not commanding, but present. Watching. Learning. He wore a little too much stubbornness in his jaw to be purely symbolic, but his eyes were clearer now. He was still Jim. Just... younger.

Older Kirk—Kirk Prime—was already seated at the engineering station, one leg crossed over the other, fingers steepled. He didn’t touch the controls. He didn't need to. He simply watched, waiting with the patience of someone who had seen it all before "Not too bad, kid," he said, a sort of kind admiration lacing his speech.

Kelvin Spock stood beside the tactical station. Not directly at it—he seemed reluctant to command force. But he monitored it, alert, prepared, aware. One hand hovered just above the surface, and every now and then, it flickered faintly golden, like something deeper than reflex.

Spock Prime stood by the science console on the opposite side of the bridge from the boy, as if bookending the timeline. His hands were clasped behind his back, his gaze locked not on the screen but on Jim. Watching him like a parent, a teacher, a comrade—all three at once.

And Jim...

Jim qpproached command chair.

No one gestured toward it. No one told him it was his. They didn’t have to.

He stepped forward.

He let out a breath.

He sat.

It fit differently now.

There was a weight to it—or perhaps the weight rested in himself—not heavy, but true. Not responsibility alone, but connection. Every presence on this bridge was a thread in a web in which he was the center. Not as a spider, not as a god—but as the part of himself who had chosen again and again to keep going, to keep trying, to keep reaching out despite the pain and the fear and the darkness.

To keep leading.

He leaned back. He looked around.

"You’re all with me?" he asked.

"Aye, sir," the boy said softly.

"Always," said Kirk Prime, throwing a cheeky wink at the elder Spock, who responded with a familiar eyebrow raise.

Younger Spock merely inclined his head. His dark eyes flickered gold.

Spock Prime said nothing, but Jim felt the warmth of his mind within his own, like a hand resting on his shoulder.

The screen flickered once.

Then steadied.

And outside, in the vast mindspace—where memory and logic and pain and hope all spun together in silence—a shape began to form: a starship, rebuilt from pieces. Not the Enterprise, not exactly. Something that represented her.

Something only they could fly.

Jim looked out at it.

His hands curled lightly around the arms of the chair.

"Let’s see what she can do," he whispered.
Jim looked out at the screen—at the ship of his mind, his soul, theirs. Whole and strange and beautiful.

“Take us out,” he ordered.

The ship moved.

Light arced across the screen like sunrise.

There was no shake, no resistance—only motion, smooth and sure. The dreamspace bridge hummed once, gently, like a heartbeat. And then—

The meld fell.

The mental construct dissolved like mist at dawn.

Jim gasped, his lungs drinking in air as if for the first time.

He jerked in place, eyes flying open, a thin sheen of sweat across his forehead. The press of two Vulcan minds snapped away like cords being cut—painless, but felt. Deeply. His skin still tingled at his temples where their hands still rested. His chest ached with the memory of being held

He felt—steady, anchored, safe.

They were in the meditation chamber again.

Breathing hard.

At his back, the elder Spock.

In front, the younger.

And both—still with him. Not gone. Not severed.
The bond shimmered low and quiet at the edge of his perception, like a flame that had settled from blaze to ember. Present. Waiting. Held.

Jim shivered once and blinked the world into focus. His face glistened and his nose felt tight as if he had been weeping. Jim’s voice was hoarse when he finally spoke.

“…Well. That was...”

Spock Prime’s hand was already lowering gently from his face, his eyes searching. Kelvin Spock remained still, his own hand withdrawing slowly, as if reluctant to break the final moment of contact.

Neither rushed him.

Jim sat there, chest heaving once, then again.

He didn’t run. Didn’t flinch.

He just breathed.

And inside—inside—everything was quieter than it had been in a long, long time.

Kirk tried to stand.

He made it exactly halfway to vertical before the world tilted like a ship under fire. His knees buckled, and he might have gone sprawling if not for the two steady sets of arms catching him in perfect, mirrored unison.

Spock’s hand—no, both Spocks’ hands—gripped his shoulders, lowering him gently down, one controlled breath at a time, to the meditation room floor. Cool cushions caught him. A warm presence steadied him from behind.

Then—

“Dammit, Jim!”

McCoy barreled into the room, tricorder already flipped open with the fury of a man who intended to use it as either scanner or bludgeon.

Perhaps both.

“Do you want to die of a brain hemorrhage? ‘Cause this is how you die of a damn brain hemorrhage!”

Kirk gave him a crooked, dopey grin. “Heya, Bones.”

“Don’t you ‘heya Bones’ me, your blood pressure is in freefall, neural activity’s spiking off the charts—hell, your cortical nodes look like someone set off fireworks in there. Are you even trying to stay alive?”

Kelvin Spock gently helped Kirk recline again, hand still lightly bracing his shoulder.

Spock Prime, kneeling beside them all, blinked once with glassy calm and said, “The bond is...formed.” Then his eyes rolled back and he passed out cold.

Kirk turned his head just enough to watch the old Vulcan slump sideways with all the grace of a falling redwood. “Well,” Kirk muttered, “that seems...fair.”

Bones dropped to his knees, muttering curses in three different dialects, and scanned Spock Prime quickly. “He’ll live. Lucky him. Barely.” Then he turned to the other Vulcan. “You. Pointy. You’re next.”

Kelvin Spock opened his mouth to protest—

“Don’t start,” Bones snapped, jabbing a finger. “Lie down before you fall down. You two turned his brain into a campfire and sat around it singing the Vulcan equivalent of “Row, Row, Row your Boat,” or whatever you people do. And now you’re going to sleep it off.”

“We need to prepare for the Narada,” Kirk slurred, trying again to sit up. His head felt as if it were tucked in a warm bed, ready for sleep. How long had they been in the meld?

“And you will. By napping in y’all’s little puppy pile until all this kumbai-freakin’-yah nonsense evens out.” Bones didn’t even glance up from his scans. The more worried he got, the thicker his accent became. “I’ll wake all y’all in four to six hours, dependin’ on which one of y’all spikes a fever first.”

The darker haired Spock hesitated—just for a second—and then lowered himself beside the others, a slow, careful gesture of surrender. He settled neatly next to Jim. His hand, without fuss or flourish, found the captain’s.

Jim didn’t pull away.

Prime shifted in his sleep. Spock closed his eyes. Jim exhaled. The warmth of their bond wrapped around him like a blanket pulled up to his chin.

He might’ve been embarrassed—maybe he should’ve been—but right now?

It felt too nice to care.

Chapter Text

Jim Kirk woke up warm.

That in itself was unusual. The Enterprise was climate-controlled within an inch of its life, but something within him told him that the warmth he felt wasn’t environmental—this was something alive, solid, steady.

It felt—nice.

As his awareness grew, he made note of one Vulcan arm slung tight across his chest and another curled protectively behind his back. He shifted slightly and felt the brush of a third hand, long fingers resting near his shoulder. His legs were tangled comfortably around an indeterminate number of adjacent limbs.

It occurred to him that he could actually tell a difference between the embraces. One…felt?…brighter, energetic, and well, young. The other was slower, steadier, giving off an energy that was both weary and more mature. Both of them carried a tinge of sadness and loss about them but that was overshadowed by an amazing, almost indescribable depth of feeling, of warmth

—towards Jim.

Two Vulcans. Right. That had happened.

It was a little bit overwhelming.

Kirk cracked one eye open. The lights were still low—Sickbay hadn’t yet cycled to full morning brightness. For a moment, he didn’t dare move, didn’t breathe, afraid he’d break whatever bubble that held them so tenderly. Spock Prime’s breathing swelled deep and even behind him. His own Spock’s head rested lightly near his shoulder. They were… touching, physically yes, but also, more. A single entity. Jim had never felt such closeness that wasn’t tied up in arousal and release. This held none of that energy, and yet it felt intensely intimate. Intentional.

The bond thrum was still there, quiet now, like a distant heartbeat felt through the soles of your feet. His awareness of them both expanded as sleep fled. He could sense his Spock’s analytical presence with its undercurrent of fierce loyalty, and Prime’s deeper, older current, slow as tectonic plates and no less powerful.

He should move. He should definitely move.

He didn’t.

A beat later, the door hissed open.

“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” came McCoy’s voice, far too loud and far too amused.

Jim groaned and pressed his face into a Vulcan shoulder. “Five more minutes, Bones.”

“I’d give you ten, but then I’d have to deal with Sulu asking if you were dead and Chekov vibrating himself to bits holding his ideas in,” Bones replied dryly. He approached the tangle of humanoids and cushioning wielding his ever-present tricorder. “Vitals are better. Neural patterns are less erratic. And your blood pressure is only marginally ‘I just mind-melded with two telepathic aliens at once.’”

“Gee, thanks, Mom,” Jim mumbled. Neither Spock stirred, though he could feel one of them—the younger by the—flavor?—come a little more online. There was a vague ripple of awareness through the bond, followed by a sense of embarrassed composure being reassembled with Vulcan speed.

“Uhura’s been asking for you,” Bones added. “She still hasn’t been able to get in contact with Starfleet Command. She believes that there is something about that red matter that scrambles all long range subspace communications. I’d count that as a blessing to be honest. Something tells me that they’re going to be a bit worried about your unauthorized mind-meld cuddle puddle disrupting their confidence in the chain of command.”

Kirk groaned louder. “If it saves Earth, they can fucking deal with it.”

“I suppose they’ll have to , I’m just grateful you’re still breathing,” Bones grumbled, then softened, just a little. “You did good, Jim. Whatever it was you three pulled off—it worked. We’ve got a fighting chance.”

That got him moving. Slowly. Carefully. He shifted just enough to sit up without dislodging the Vulcans too badly. The younger Spock blinked his eyes open and speared him with a mild look of inquiry. Spock Prime stayed where he was, entirely at peace, still asleep.

“We ready for this?” Jim asked softly.

Spock inclined his head. “Not quite, Captain. We have yet to formulate a concrete plan for what to do once we successfully infiltrate the Narada.”

Jim ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Right.”

Bones handed him a uniform shirt with a fresh captain’s delta pinned to the chest. “Try not to get your brains or your atoms scrambled this time.”

Jim grinned. “No promises.”

Kirk had just finished pulling his shirt over his head when he glanced back at the erstwhile nest. Spock Prime was deeply unconscious still, the faint rise and fall of his chest the only sign of life. His features were placid, but even in sleep, there was something... taut. Like a string pulled tight.

Jim stepped closer and knelt by his older bondmate.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Time to get up, old man.”

He reached out, just a light touch to the older Vulcan’s shoulder.

Spock Prime stirred.

And then—

Emotion, so deep and profound it threatened to drown him in its intensity. A tide of feelings that surged out from the depths of unconsciousness, as if attempting to drag him under.

At first, a wave of contentment, a feeling rooted so deeply in the soul that it could have only been formed through decades of closeness and trust with another being, rose through the bond like the welling of a hot spring fed by volcanic sources. For a moment, Jim nearly forgot who—or where—he was. It was like basking in the heat of the earth, knowing that you were just a small part of a much bigger whole.

Then the feelings shifted. Confusion bloomed, sharp and brief, quickly eclipsed by a burst of startled joy— recognition —as if Spock Prime had suddenly opened his eyes into a miracle.

Jim staggered.

And then everything shifted.

Realization.

Not his Jim.

Not the one who watched him die in radiation and silence. Who was so patient afterwards, putting aside his pain and doubt to pull off yet another fantastical success against the toughest of odds.

Of their joyous rebinding, and later, their excruciating separation.

The memory of that second hit him with a grief so deep and ancient it made Jim’s stomach drop and his chest seize. He couldn’t breathe. The bond pulsed like a wound.

Loss. Love. Despair.

Jim.

Even though the name wasn’t directed at him, the young Captain staggered beneath the weight of it. Never in his wildest imaginings could he have understood exactly how much meaning and essence it were possible to convey by something as simple as a name. It echoed through the older Vulcan’s soul, a spiritually scoured sob swimming in long-buried grief. Jim felt it all—the vacuum where his other self had been, the ache of decades alone, the memory of a hand pressed against glass.

He barely noticed that he had collapsed to his hands and knees.

Then, just as quickly, the wave of grief turned, as if the pain had crested, reaching its high water mark and was now sweeping itself back out to sea. Not faded—never that—but transformed. Redirected. It curled around him like a cloak settling around his shoulders: protective, deliberate, chosen .

Not Jim Prime . Jim Now .

Adoration. Fierce, warm, a foundation being poured in real time.

Spock Prime opened his eyes.

Kirk was breathing hard, both hands braced on the floor. “Well,” he rasped, “good morning to you, too.”

The older Vulcan blinked. For a moment, his gaze remained clouded, caught in a place between time and loss. Then it focused—on Jim—and the weight of a thousand regrets softened around the edges.

“My apologies,” Spock Prime said slowly. “That was… unshielded.”

Jim offered a shaky smile. “Yeah, no kidding. Are you ok?”

A muted sense of fondness pulsed through the link. This was going to take some getting used to.

Spock Prime sat up with effort. “The bond is... complete?”

“Feels like it,” Jim said, still not quite steady. “Look, I’m sorry about all that metaphorical shit. That was him, wasn’t it? On the bridge?”

The venerable Vulcan nodded. “I believe it was, or rather it was the part of him that resides in my memory. He would have been pleased to know he was of use to you.”

Jim shook his head, “I feel like I just met the ghost of myself.”

Spock Prime looked at him with something deep and solemn in his eyes. “You are not a ghost.”

Kirk huffed a breath that was nearly a laugh.

“No. Just haunted.” He hauled himself upright and extended his hand

Spock Prime reached out, a shock of resonance sparking between them. Once they were both vertical, Spock Prime placed one steady hand on Jim’s shoulder, grounding them both.

Jim felt the presence of the younger Spock reverberate the energy.

“You are alive , James Kirk,” said Spock Prime. “That is no small thing.”

Kirk swallowed hard, nodded once, and let the bond settle.

“Let’s try to keep it that way,” Jim quipped.

A gruff, southern accented voice countered with an empathetic “Amen.”

Jim smiled.

They had a war to win.

Chapter Text

After a brief period of reorientation, Kirk set off to tackle the briefing room. His hair was still mussed, shirt rumpled, and the brace of Spocks were following along behind him. The Commander had assumed the posture of someone trying very hard to look unaffected by the recent cuddling experience. (His success was somewhat limited, but Jim didn’t have the heart to tease him about it) Spock Prime kept pace, exuding a sense of calm that Kirk very much appreciated.

The doctor’s footsteps next to him were strong and steady in that special “I’m pissed off at the whole galaxy” sort of way that was unique to Leonard McCoy. That also, provided an odd sense of comfort.

His life was so weird.

When the doors swished open, Jim found himself encroaching upon a scene of barely contained chaos. He blinked twice, disbelieving eyes doing their best to to make some kind sense of it.

The room was packed, filled with the entire cobbled together complement of his impromptu senior staff. Every single one of them seemed to be talking at once. Jim noted that there were a multitude of conversations going on at the same time, with several individuals participating in two (or more) at once. Each crew person was fully engaged in an extraordinarily energetic planning session.

Holograms flickered across the table and continued along the wall mounted viewscreen like marching ants. Lines of tactical data scrolled by so fast even he needed a second look to catch the gist of it.

Scotty, sleeves rolled, what remained of his hair wild, was elbows-deep in the guts of a modified sensor relay hooked up to the table’s display port. Sulu stood nearby with a stylus in hand, adjusting trajectory projections mid-sentence. Uhura, confident and poised as always, pulled up logs and overlaid Klingon schematics in time with Checkov’s fast-paced explanation of power flow readings.

Kirk blinked again, slightly worried that he was still hallucinating. After a short period of observation, he determined that the situation felt real enough for now, so he made his customary executive decision to just go with it.

“You all were supposed to be resting,” he accused, accusingly.

Uhura didn’t even look up. “You were unconscious, Captain. We took the liberty of not dying of boredom.”

Checkov beamed. “Also, wery important tactical analysis!”

“You did this in four hours?” Jim asked, stepping forward, a little thrill of pride running through him. She may only have been his for less than a day, but this was already Jim’s ship, Jim’s crew…

Jim’s family.

“Tell me I’m not still dreaming.”

Scotty looked up, wiped his forehead with his sleeve, and gave a little snort. “Well, I’d say this sort of situation falls more in the ‘nightmare‘ category, but that’s just a matter of semantics. I’m more in favor of miracle working myself, goodness knows we’re going to need more than a couple of those. I considered trying to alter the flow of space-time to give us a bit more wiggle room, but I figured you’d had enough of that kind of nonsense for the duration.”

Kirk gave a dry laugh, not quite certain if Scotty was being facetious, or if he really meant it. “Let’s hope we don’t get to the point where such extreme measures become necessary, Mr. Scott. What’ve we got?”

The Scotsman tapped a command and a ghostly wireframe of the Narada appeared midair, slowly rotating above the table. Even in abstraction, the ship was monstrous. Layered, spiraled, and bristling with asymmetrical blades and clusters of weapons. A black, coiled leviathan of a thing.

“I gotta tell ya Captain, I have ne’re seen a crazier ship design than this beastie right here,” the engineer complained. “The size ‘o it I can understand, but what’s all this nonsense about?” He gestured to the strange, almost squid like protrusions that covered the outside of Nero’s ship. “They’re all sort o stuck on Willy-nilly like, and they’re not performing any sort of function as far as I can tell. It almost looks like they grew themselves rather than were built.” He finished, shaking his head. “Makes no damn sense.”

The elder Spock spoke up, and Jim could feel his reassuring presence swell slightly along the newly formed bond. The man’s voice took on a certain lecturing quality that felt like it should feel familiar…

“You are correct in that a large portion of the Narada was not constructed in the usual way, Mr Scott,” the Vulcan explained, “the reason these structures appear to have been grown is because, in a very real sense, they have been. The Narada may have begun its existence as a simple mining vessel, but it has been modified. It is my understanding that the Romulans of my era had been attempting to integrate their technology with the technology of a race as yet unknown to you. They are called “The Borg”. That race makes great use of nano-robotics and self fabrication techniques to construct their equipment, among other, more sinister applications.”

“So you’re saying this thing is alive?” The doctor asked, incredulous.

“Not alive, per se,” Spock prime corrected gently, “more that the system is designed to emulate and interface with living organisms.”

“Hence, ‘the Borg’” the younger Spock interjected. “Fascinating.”

The ghostly skeleton of the ship rotated silently, looking more like some eldritch horror than a vessel, as those gathered contemplated this new information.

Moving the meeting forward, Uhura said “We’ve compiled every source we have,” She began ticking them off with a practiced rhythm. “Historical sensor data from the Kelvin incident. The Klingon distress calls—thank you, Checkov, for cracking their encryption. Pike’s full mission briefings and logs. Testimony from Starfleet survivors, including,” raising her eyes to Jim’s own, “Cadet Gallia Vro, and all of our sensor logs from the moment we dropped out of warp.”

Kirk nodded, relieved to hear that his cheerful friend was still amongst the living. “We managed to beam survivors off the fleet?”

“Barely,” Sulu said. “We were only able to grab a handful—escape pods, short-range transporters. Vro was one of the last out. Her ship was one of the first destroyed.”

Jim pushed down a sudden twinge of survivor’s guilt and felt a wave of compassion surge through the bond. He was surprised when he realized it originated from the younger Spock. Huh. This was going to take some getting used to.

Checkov cleared his throat, voice earnest. “Using all of this, we reconstructed major systems—bridge here,” he gestured, “weapons clusters, reactor systems, probable shield nodes, auxiliary thruster locations. Some sensor arrays, tractor beam emitters—”

“There appears to be quite a lot of empty space inside. We think most of that must be cargo bay,” Uhura added.

Kirk folded his arms, watching the swirling display. “And the maneuvering estimates?”

Sulu grimaced. “Rough. She’s massive, but according to the data we recovered from the Farragut, agile in ways she shouldn’t be. Best guess is gravitic vectoring and advanced subspace impulse manipulation. It can turn like a bird when it wants to. But we’ve seen it idle, too. It takes time to power those systems.”

“It won’t be able to move much if it gets that drill out,” Chekov noted.

“Yeah, but then we’ll have a whole new set of problems,” Jim pointed out.

Jim moved around the table, taking in the display from several different angles. “How is it powered, anyway? I don’t see anything that looks like a dilithium converter.”

Scotty, still frowning at the schematics, shook his head, “Warp signature’s a little odd, too.”

Kirk turned. “What do you mean?”

Scotty flicked a few commands into the console, and the wireframe of the Narada shifted, overlaying a pulse pattern that shimmered with faint gravitic distortion. “It’s... off. Not like any matter-antimatter reaction I’ve seen. It’s almost gravitational—like the ship’s pulling energy from a collapse point.”

Spock Prime leaned forward. “That would be consistent with what I know of Romulan technology in the coming years. The Star empire was never rich in dilithium to begin with, and certain events I am not prepared to disclose will exacerbate the problem. A few decades from now, the Romulans begin to transition away from using matter-antimatter chambers. They power their ships using a singularity drive—a contained artificial black hole.”

Scotty’s eyebrows shot up. “A black hole? You’re saying they run the ship on Hawking radiation?”

“Correct,” Spock Prime said. “The radiation generated by the singularity’s evaporation process is harvested and converted into usable energy. It is highly efficient, but extraordinarily volatile.”

“What difference does that make?” Interjected McCoy. “Thing could be powered by sugar plums and gumdrops for all we know, don’t change the fact that it packs a hell of a wallop.”

Several people opened their mouths to argue, but Bones was right.

“He’s right,” Jim agreed. “We don’t need to know how to make it go, just how to make it stop. Let’s move on.”

Kirk pointedly ignored the disappointment that bloomed on the faces of everyone wearing a red shirt. Saving Earth was the important part, not theoretical physics, no matter how groundbreaking.

He forced his eyes back onto the image of the Narada, looming like a cancerous phantom set to consume everything and everyone in its path. Its black spines like needles jutted at odd angles from the hull, like the claw of some monster come to rip out the heart of the Federation.

Fuck.

Around the room, the others waited—Spock, Spock Prime, Uhura, McCoy, Sulu, Chekov, Scotty. All of them were watching him.

Waiting for him.

Waiting for Kirk to come up with something brilliant.

He didn’t speak. Not yet. He stood at the head of the table with arms crossed over his chest. His eyes darted back and forth, studying the enemy from every possible angle.

The others had said their piece—tactical capabilities, technological anomalies, analysis of prior engagements. They’d laid it all out, and now it was his move.

When Jim was small, his grandfather had dug out an old dusty chessboard. Jim had protested as the old man had set it up. Even at that age…was he five?…he had already known the basics. He had only started to pay attention when he had noticed that grandpa Ty had set up the pieces, not in a starting position, but as if it were a game already in progress.. Jim remembered how angry he had been when he realized that the side that he was meant to play had far fewer pieces than its opposition, and more than one had threatened his king directly.

They hadn’t even begun and he was being set up to lose.

“That’s not fair!” He had complained.

“That’s the point,” his grandfather had replied.

Now he was playing on the losing side of a far larger, more precarious chessboard, and just like back then, he was only one move away from defeat. Nero had the advantage in every direction—technology, firepower, experience. Kirk didn’t even have a full crew. Half the kids on his ship had been taking finals the week before.

He was outgunned. Outmatched.

Outmaneuvered before they’d even begun.

What remained of his rooks, bishops, and knights were now in pieces orbiting a singularity light years away.

All he had was his queen.

The silence stretched. No one pushed him—they respected him too much, or trusted him too much, or both. That was the worst part. He could feel their belief in him, heavy as gravity, pressing into his shoulders. McCoy’s anxious concern, Uhura’s steady confidence, Chekov’s hopeful energy, and from the bond, both Spocks unflappable calm.

If only he had half as much faith in himself.

He straightened slowly and walked toward the holo-display, circling the projected Narada. It turned with predatory slowness, and Kirk swore it was watching him. God, what a mess of a ship—bristling, jagged, wrong. Built to destroy. Built to last. It had already devoured one planet. It was ravenous enough to take another.

Ok. First things first. Get the king out of danger.

The Earth had to be protected.

They had to disable that drill.

His eyes drifted to his ragtag crew. Spock Prime met his gaze without flinching. There was no judgment there—just patience. Understanding.

Kirk exhaled, long and slow.

“Alright,” he said finally, happy that his voice at least came out confident.

One move at a time.

“Nero’s got us in check. But the game’s not over yet.” he announced.

He turned back toward the group, jaw set. The board was ugly. Most of his pieces were pawns.

But the king was still standing, and it was his turn to move.

“Time to play.”

Chapter Text

“Ok,” Kirk said, “let’s go over this one step at a time. How’s our trajectory looking?”

Sulu moved with the quiet assurance of someone who had already run the numbers in his head twice over. A small movement of his hands brought up an image of the familiar gas giant. A plotted course streaked across the visual, terminating just inside the planet’s swirling atmosphere.

“We’re right on course, as of a minor adjustment about thirty minutes ago, sir,” the helmsman supplied. “When we come out of warp, we’ll be just below Jupiter’s highest cloud layer, the shockwave’ll be… considerable.” He gave the faintest smile, almost daring anyone to object. “But Jupiter’s big enough to take it. Shields will hold, and by the time the Narada comes calling , we’ll be invisible.” His voice was consumently professional, but a glint in his eyes gave away the thrill of the maneuver he was proposing.

Kirk nodded, his inner five year old grinning
maniacally at the image of the Enterprise essentially “cannonballing” an entire planet. He thought he had hidden it well when he caught sight of a slightly accusatory eyebrow thrown in his direction by the henceforth to be named “stick in the mud” younger Spock. Jim imagined sticking his tongue out at the man and was rewarded with a rare second eyebrow. Heh. So there. Serves him right.

Returning to the problem he continued, “How long?”

“Three hours, give or take,” Sulu replied.

Looking to Scotty, he asked. “How much lead time does that give us?”

The engineer sucked a breath in through his teeth, making a face that only a disgruntled Scotsman could manage. “That beast? Lad, it’s a bloody mining ship turned monstrosity. It shouldnae even be in warp at t’all, not with that kind o’ mass. I’d wager she cannae sustain more than warp six before her bubble starts tearing itself apart.” He gave a little shrug, as though daring the Narada to try. “That means we should have at least an hour, maybe more. With luck, they’ll be too busy with the deceleration to notice our little hidey-hole. Plenty o’ time if we dinnae muck it up.”

Kirk nodded. This was good. “Let’s make the most of it. As soon as we drop into Jupiter’s atmosphere, we get set up to beam over.” His eyes swept the table, landing on the young Russian ensign who’d been practically vibrating with energy. “Chekov, that’s where you come in.”

Usually, he wouldn’t have trusted a seventeen year old to tie his own shoelaces, but the kid had saved his and Sulu’s life during the Vulcan fiasco. Jim had faith in him.

The boy straightened in his seat, almost bouncing as he spoke. “Keptin, once we are concealed, we can lower shields. Once the Narada is in range, it will give me clean lock on coordinates. I then will beam you and Commander Spock directly onto the enemy wessle. The noise of the planet’s magnetosphere should conceal the signal nicely.” His accent had tripped over “directly” and “vessel,” but the determination in his face erased any doubt about his confidence.

“Alrighty,” Kirk acknowledged, feeling a bit more confident as the plan came together. “What next?”

Spock Prime sat forward and folded his hands on the table, his face calm but grave. The firelight of Jupiter’s swirling storms flickered in his eyes from the nearby viewscreen as he addressed them all.

“Once you are aboard the Narada, your first priority should be to locate the vessel in which I arrived. The Jellyfish was designed for a singular purpose—its systems are uniquely suited to contain volatile materials safely. The red matter will almost certainly still be aboard.”

Uhura tilted her head, her sharp, dark eyes narrowing as her voice cut through the tension.

“What is red matter? I mean, I know about dark matter but this sounds like something completely different.”

Spock Prime lifted his chin slightly. “Red matter is an artificially created, super-concentrated form of matter. Due to its internal structure, specifically its quantum geometry, it does not interact with gravity in any conventional sense. Just as Dark matter and neutrinos are not affected by the electromagnetic force, Red Matter is not affected by gravitational forces. As one of the ways we describe gravity itself is the curvature of space-time, Red Matter, in a sense, exists outside of that.”

Jim could just about see the gears turning in the heads of each member of his amazing crew.

“So how does it create a black hole?” Sulu mused. “I thought that was nothing but gravity?”

Uhura frowned. “Exactly… Vulcan imploded. That wasn’t a weapon detonation. That was a gravitational collapse.”

“Ah,” noted Spock prime, “Red Matter exists outside of space-time, a state where the fundamental forces, specifically the gravitational force, become….unreliable. If enough heat and pressure are applied, however, the geometry shifts, breaking the super symmetry, and then, as an old friend of mine was fond of saying, ‘all bets are off’.”

“So, it’s sort of like a portable, on demand singularity generator?” Jim concluded.

Spock Prime nodded. “Correct. Red matter, once destabilized, becomes reactive. It transitions into a hybridized state—a fusion of normal and dark matter—which does interact with gravity. Violently. The result is a near instantaneous manifestation of an event horizon at the Schwarzschild radius—a black hole.”

Chekov squinted at the projection on the table. “So… it is like how with matter, a substance can exist as a gas, liquid… and then a solid, depending solely on its density. This is… like that, but with energy?”

“Yes,” Spock Prime confirmed. “A state beyond anything naturally occurring. Just as energy becomes matter at high enough concentrations—red matter is a further refinement. A compression of matter itself, far beyond what atomic bonds can endure.”

Scotty let out a low whistle. “So ye’re sayin’ we’re dealin’ with a bottle full o’ black holes just waitin’ to be uncorked? That’s no’ exactly somethin’ ye store in the pantry, is it?”

Spock Prime’s gaze shifted toward him, serene but unyielding. “That is precisely why the Jellyfish was designed as both vessel and vault. Nero will not risk attempting to transfer the red matter to his ship’s crude holds. He will keep it there, waiting for the moment he intends to deploy it.”.

Kirk crossed his arms. “And the drill? Why bother with it if the red matter’s that powerful?” He stopped to think for a second and then answered his own question. “Because the red matter must be ignited. Destabilized. It requires both heat and pressure—conditions strong enough to fracture its quantum field.”

He felt a warm glow of approval and admiration flow from the older Spock.

“So Nero drilled to the core of Vulcan,” Uhura said slowly taking up the narrative, “because that’s where he’d find both.”

“Correct,” said Spock Prime. “He needed to penetrate the crust, the mantle, and reach the upper core. Once there, he released the red matter. The intense conditions destabilized it. And the singularity formed.”

McCoy muttered, “Jesus.”

Sulu’s spoke up then, slightly indignant. “But Kirk and I took that drill out. And Vulcan still collapsed.”

Spock Prime nodded. “Unfortunately, your actions, while heroic, came too late. The depth was sufficient to ignite the payload.”

Jim leaned forward. “Still, that gives us a window. A clock. They need time to drill. It’s not instant. We need to figure out how long we have.”

Uhura’s fingers tapped rapidly against the table as she reviewed the time logs. “The distress call from Vulcan came in at 0300. It imploded at approximately 0900. That’s six hours between arrival and destruction.”

“They probably spent some of that fighting the planetary defense systems,” Chekov pointed out, trying to sound hopeful and failing. “We know they did not just let the Narada walk in and start drilling.”

“You saw what they did to our fleet. The Vulcan defense force couldn’t have fared much better,” Kirk pointed out.

The younger Spock added. “Also, they have Captain Pike. It would be foolish to assume they have not obtained our security codes.”

Spock Prime nodded grimly. “It is likely therefore that the Narada will not face the same resistance this time. They may even be able to commence drilling within minutes of arrival.”

“How long,” Jim asked, “did it take to reach the correct depth on Vulcan?

“According to survivors’ accounts, approximately three point four hours,” Spock Prime said. “Unfortunately, the planetary composition of Earth is significantly different from that of Vulcan. For one, it is smaller and less dense overall, and, unlike Vulcan, has oceans, where the crust is significantly thinner than beneath the continents.. Assuming a similar drill speed to what we saw on Vulcan, the time to reach the appropriate conditions for detonation would likely be seriously reduced.”

The doctor decided to put in his two cents. “They can dig as deep a hole as they want, but if they don’t have that red matter stuff it’s not going to do them a lot of good, right?” Heads nodded in agreement as McCoy continued. “So it all comes back to y’all getting ahold of that jelly ship thing…”

“Precisely, doctor,” the time traveler noted. “I was just getting back to that. Once my younger self and the captain have beamed over, they should be able to locate the jellyfish. The ship is programmed to respond to myself, and as such, the Commander should have no trouble…well, commandeering the vessel.” Jim shook his head. The juxtaposition of the old man’s serene expression and the wave of turbulent emotions coming through the newly formed bond was a little bit disturbing. He never would have thought that anyone could have that kind of control. He’d have to remind himself never to play poker against the old rascal.

“I presume this vessel is equipped with offensive capabilities?” asked the younger Spock.

The older one nodded, “you should be able to, for the lack of a better word, shoot your way out without having to worry about retaliation. Any impact would create the possibility of red matter ignition.”

“Meanwhile,” Jim interjected, “I can locate Pike.” He thought for a second, “theoretically, I can then signal Scotty to beam us out of there…”

“Not if they’ve got that drill goin’” grumbled McCoy.

“Which brings us back around to timing,” Kirk stated. “Scotty, can you estimate how long is it going to take from the time we can beam onto the Narada to when it can fire up that drill?”

“That depends on how hot she comes flying’ in Cap’n.” The engineer supplied. “Computer, how long would it take for a ship traveling at warp six when passing Jupiter’s current position to reach Geostationary orbit above Terra, assume constant deceleration?”

After a brief pause, an extraordinarily neutral female voice answered.

“Calculated travel time: 22.486 seconds.”

No one said anything for nearly that long, all of them contemplating the enormity of their proposed undertaking.

“Well, Shit.” Said Kirk.

Chapter Text

“Scotty, you said that warp six was the maximum speed the Narada could likely maintain?” Jim asked, breaking the uncomfortable silence yet again.

The engineer gave a terse nod, his eyes fixed on the flickering display. “Aye. She’s too big to hold more than that steady, at least not without tearing herself apart.”

Jim paced back and forth, jaw set and arms crossed. “And if she comes in slower? Warp four, say?”

Spock answered before Scotty could. “That would extend our margin by several minutes. However, even at warp four, the Narada would reach Earth in less than twenty minutes. The time would likely still be insufficient for our purposes.”

Jim swore under his breath, dropping one of his arms and placing the other hand on his temple, which was beginning to throb worryingly. “What about warp two?”

Spock’s face remained unreadable. “That would increase the interval. Approximately thirty minutes more before intercept. You realize that such a reduction in speed is improbable, given Nero’s urgency?”

“I’m just trying to get a sense of what’s possible,” Kirk snapped, which triggered a brief burst of hurtangershameirritation to resonate along the bond, interacting with Jim’s frustration like overlapping waves.

This was not helping his head. He sighed and forced himself to calm down. The throbbing lessened, and he got the feeling that the elder Spock had stepped in to regulate.

Huh. Neat. He’d have to ask about that later.

Ok, he thought, bringing his attention back yet again. As far as timing went, the best case scenario…wasn’t great. A few minutes here, maybe half an hour there. Jim felt the pressure of it sitting heavy on his chest. There was just not enough time to risk missing their chance. They needed certainty, not maybes.

He glanced at Spock. “So what do we do to buy more time? I mean, if we can’t count on them crawling in at warp two, then what?”

It was Uhura who answered, her voice calm and steady enough to lower the anxiety level in the room by a considerable amount. “If the drill were disabled before they reached orbit, it would force them to delay. They would have to repair it—or find another way to destabilize Earth’s core.”

Jim nodded as he turned it over in his head, the idea taking root and blossoming quickly. Taking out the drill was simple, dangerous, and—unlike waiting on Nero to make a mistake—something they could actually control.

He caught Spock’s eye. For once, the Vulcan didn’t immediately object. That, more than anything, told Jim they were thinking along the same lines.

“Alright,” Jim said, the decision crystallizing. “If it’s time we need, then we make it ourselves. We take out the drill.”

“With what?” The doctor scoffed. “That little jellyfish pod? The whole point is that we’re assuming Spock can’t abscond with the damn thing in time.”

Seven pairs of eyes swiveled in his direction.

“Abscond?” Asked Kirk, his eyebrows flying towards his hairline in surprise, “really Bones?”

“Oh, fuck you, Jim. You know what I mean, damn it!”

Leave it to Bones to break the tension in the rudest way possible.

Jim’s smirk morphed back into a concentrated stare as he returned his mind to the problem. Bones was right, they couldn’t count on the future ship, even if Nero wasn’t going to target it…which given Nero’s state of mind…Jim shivered. He didn’t think the Romulan was crazy enough to risk igniting the red matter that close to his own ship, but he couldn’t rule it out.

Man, this really sucked.

Biting his lip, Jim acknowledged that there was only one ship that could possibly target the drill.

“Enterprise will have to do it,” he said.

Spock Prime steepled his fingers, his gaze distant, voice low. “The drill is too well protected while stowed away. Once it is deployed, however—”

“—we still can’t hit it,” Chekov interjected, unable to contain himself. His accent made the words tumble together in his rush. “Once da drill is out, the interference will prewent us from getting a weapons lock. That’s even assuming the Enterprise does not get destroyed before we line up a shot. That drill is small, close would not be good enough.”

Silence fell again, heavier this time.

Jim sat forward, elbows on the console, resting his chin on folded hands, glaring harder at the model as another idea took shape. He thought back to that terrifying jump over Vulcan, he pictured the drill in his mind. It had been a spindly thing, hundreds of miles long, piercing into the atmosphere like a deadly needle. There would be no way to shield such a thing, even before the plasma activation. This wasn’t something that needed precision to disable. If they couldn’t target it with phasers or torpedoes, perhaps they could just…smash it, break it off?

Jim slouched back, eyes flicking up to the tactical display. The model of their descent into Jupiter’s atmosphere still spun lazily, Sulu’s delighted voice echoing in his mind from earlier. It’ll cause one hell of a shock wave…

Vividly, Jim remembered a scorching afternoon in Iowa, learning how to shoot an ancient 22 caliber at the even older fence that encircled his family’s farmhouse. It had taken him a while to get good at it, and asshole Frank hadn’t made it any easier. “Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and thermonuclear weapons my boy!” He would laugh as he had guzzled another cheap beer. Well, Jim supposed that the Enterprise wasn’t a horseshoe or a hand grenade…but it was capable of producing a hefty hypersonic atmospheric pressure wave under the right circumstances...

He rubbed at his jaw, the corners of his mouth twitching in something between a smirk and a grimace. “We don’t need a weapons lock. What if all we need to do is be close enough to let physics do the work for us?”

The thought was half-mad, sure. But then again, half-mad ideas had already gotten him this far.

That was when Scotty, restless, leaned back in his chair and muttered, “Are you suggesting that we use the Enterprise to ram the bloody thing?”

Kirk shook his head. “Not the drill, the atmosphere, just like we are planning to do over Jupiter. There’s no need for targeting, warp shear alone would shatter it.”

Someone immediately objected. “That’s suicide. And if you miss—”

“We wouldn’t miss,” Scotty snapped.

Spock Prime cleared his throat. “It is theoretically possible, we could emerge from warp inside the upper atmosphere. The resulting shock wave would propagate through the air. That energy would be more than sufficient to destabilize and obliterate the drill structure.”

There was a beat of silence.

Bones, arms folded, broke it with a scowl. “And what happens if Nero decides to park over San Francisco? You’d get your shockwave all right—one that levels half the damn city. Ever heard of Tunguska? Whole forest flattened, and that was just a rock skimming the atmosphere. Multiply that by ten thousand and drop it on the Bay Area—congratulations, you’ve just done Nero’s job for him.”

Everyone turned to stare.

Spock raised an eyebrow, voice cool. “Doctor, the Narada must remain in geostationary orbit to deploy its drill. That limits deployment strictly to the equatorial belt. San Francisco is quite safe.”

Bones shifted in his seat, tugging at his sleeve defensively. “Well, excuse me for not acing Orbital Mechanics 401. Wasn’t exactly my best subject.”

Kirk’s grin broke loose before he could stop it. “It was only because of me he even pulled a C-minus.”

McCoy’s face could have curdled milk, but there was a vulnerability underneath that showed that the insult had struck deeper than it had perhaps been intended.

A few awkward chuckles rippled through the room. Spock Prime’s expression did not change. He tilted his head slightly, regarding McCoy with an oddly gentle patience. “Doctor, you are a healer. It is not your function to calculate trajectories. It is your function to ensure that those who do survive long enough to calculate them. Do not undervalue your role.”

Bones looked somewhat mollified, but Kirk’s elder bondmate continued.

“Or to put it more succinctly, one might say that you are a Doctor, not an astrodynamcist.”

Kirk blinked at that. For a moment, he swore he felt something smug emanating from the old Vulcan—like some private joke Spock Prime wasn’t letting him in on. Jim shook his head, adding it to the already extensive list of “things I need to ask Spock assuming I don’t die.”

“All right. So best case, Jim-and-Spock boarding action works, we stop the drill before it hits depth. Worst case…” He gestured to Scotty. “We slam the Enterprise into it, shockwave and all. Sounds like we’ve got our backup plan.”

But the helmsman’s head was shaking before Kirk finished. “That puts the Enterprise right back in the line of fire,” he pointed out. “One starship versus that thing? We know how that plays out.”

Kirk sighed in frustration. Every problem solved seemed to generate two more. He glared at the frozen image of the Narada again—ugly and hulking and patient, Sulu was right…

“In that case, let’s go over that data again, then, see if there’s anything we can learn,” Jim said as he pulled up the audio logs from the Kelvin on the computer.

Holographic sound reconstruction made it seem as if the crew were standing in the room with them—static, shouting, overlapping voices. Ghostly voices from decades ago, desperate and afraid, bravely facing the same menace that threatened them today.

“Shields up!”
“Are they even doing anything?”
“What the hell is that thing?!”
“Impact! Impact!—”

Jim managed not to flinch outwardly. The Spocks sent him identical eyebrows of concern.
There was no point in reminding anyone that one of those voices was very likely Jim’s father.

The feed cut off in a sharp burst of static, then looped again.

No one spoke right away. The room was heavy with the weight of that last moment. Jim heard a shaky breath, probably Chekov, and then McCoy stepped forward, hands on his hips and shaking his head.

“Penetrated the hull in under thirty seconds,” Bones proclaimed grimly. “Went through their shields like tissue paper.”

“Mining vessel,” Scotty muttered from behind the main console, voice tight with disbelief. “That’s the kicker, aye? Intended to strike deep into rock and metal, but somehow evolved into what it is today, not even a warship by design, just what she became.”

“Mining equipment,” Spock added, calmly, “is often designed for maximum force with little regard for target resilience. If the Narada retains its original function, then it is logical its weapons are optimized to shear through dense planetary material, regardless of magnetic fields or any other type of interference.”

“Like shields,” Uhura grimaced.

Sulu sat forward, taking a second to cut off the shouts of the decades old dead. He shook his head. “It tore through them like a hot knife through butter. Either the Kelvin wasn’t fully powered up… or the shields were completely ineffective.”

“They were up,” Jim said quietly. “Listen again,“ Jim played one more haunting loop before stopping it to comment, “one of them calls for shield reinforcement right before impact. For some reason, they did absolutely nothing.”

No one corrected him. His father had died on that ship, after all.

Sulu cleared his throat. “The Kelvin was older. Constitution-class has stronger shields.” He stated hopefully, before suddenly deflating and added “But if it didn’t matter for them…”

“They’ll cut through us just as fast,” Jim finished through gritted teeth. Seriously, fuck this guy. So his planet blew up. Boo hoo. Shit happens, and people move on. Only psychopathic assholes decide to go on a genocidal rampage because something hurt their feelings. “Nero” (and wasn’t that name just cringy as hell) wasn’t the first, and he wouldn’t be the last, but, if Jim had his say, this reign of terror was about to end.

He moved to the edge of the table, pressing his knuckles into the surface, leaning in. He hated this feeling. This sinking, spiraling math of how outgunned they were. It was Vulcan all over again—too fast, too huge, too unstoppable.

“Why torpedoes?” he asked, more to the room than anyone. “Why not beams? Disruptors? That’s the standard operating procedure for Romulan warbirds, right? Instead they hurl these—mining torpedoes.”

“Controlled yield,” Spock Prime answered, voice rough. Jim wondered if he had actually recovered from his near drowning. “They don’t need to destroy everything—just destabilize what’s critical. They’re aiming to break things apart, its original intent being to gather raw material. Shearing faults, gravitational destabilization, shockwave propagation.”

McCoy made a disgusted sound. “They slice through planets the way a scalpel goes through skin.”

“No,” Kirk murmured, eyes locked on the ship’s image. “Like a drill bit.”

That made the room go quiet again.

He ran a hand through his hair, pacing slowly. The implications were grim—and the solutions weren’t coming fast enough. He didn’t have the luxury of time or force. Just a crew of cadets and one battered ship with one shot.

He looked around the room. Faces turned to him—Spock’s unreadable, McCoy’s tight with worry, Scotty’s mind already working a mile a minute, Chekov practically bouncing with thoughts, Uhura ready to challenge anything that didn’t hold water, Sulu stone faced and focused, and Spock Prime… eyes glued to Jim, quietly expecting him to pull a miracle out of his ass.

Jim felt the heat of their faith again, but it didn’t crush him this time.

It fueled him.

They knew the odds. And they were still here.
He turned back to the Narada’s image and narrowed his eyes.

“Alright. Let’s say shields are useless. Torpedoes cut straight through. The Enterprise can’t win in a firefight, and she sure as hell can’t win in a slugfest.”

“We will be able to destroy the drill, but once we warp in, the Enterprise will be sitting like a duck,” Checkov said morosely.

“BE a sitting duck,” Bones corrected. “But you’re not wrong…”

Kirk bit his lip, brows furrowed. This was a pugilistic showdown, a title fight between a heavyweight and a lighter opponent. The big guy had the advantage as long as the target stayed still, but fighters didn’t stand around waiting to be hit, they weren’t “sitting ducks” they moved…

“Duck and weave,” he murmured.

“What was that, Captain?” Uhura asked.

Ignoring her for a bit, Jim turned towards Scotty and asked, “what do you know about micro warp?”

The engineer’s eye bulged, “uhhh, that it’s bloody dangerous on a good day?” He scoffed. “That it churns up local subspace like a blender in a bathtub, and takes more power than 90 percent of the rest of the ship’s systems combined? That it has never been successfully used in any combat or simulation?” He shook his head, “no offense, sir, but are ye daft?!?”

“You said that the Enterprise has an abundance of power…”

“Aye, but she still uses most of it for important things…”

“Like shields?”

“That takes a big chunk, to be sure…” Scotty admitted.

Jim grinned mirthlessly, “But we just determined that shields are useless against the Narada’s arsenal…”

Spock picked up the idea and ran with it, “So, you are proposing that we forego raising our defenses entirely in order to redirect that power usage to the warp engines?”

“Don’t need shields if you’re not there to get hit,” Kirk concluded. “Besides, we need to lure this thing as far away from Earth as possible, right?”

Scotty blinked for a few seconds, clearly doing some complicated calculations in his head. Then, the older man broke into a wide, slightly maniacal grin…”Aye,” he breathed, “that could work!”

The room went still for a moment. For the first time victory seemed possible. They might be one ship facing a Romulan dreadnought, but they were clever and resourceful. This multi pronged attack covered a lot of their bases, even if one aspect failed, they’d have another angle from which to act. It was their best chance, and they would have to take it. The unspoken weight of it pressed down on them all.

Kirk broke the silence, voice steady, eyes burning. “Then that’s the play. Spock and I infiltrate and steal the red matter, I locate Pike and possibly sabotage something important before Chekov beams us out. At the same time, the Enterprise rams the drill with a warp into atmosphere, and then flies circles around the Narada too fast for it to hit. We can then lure it away from Earth, and if it’s still intact we use the Red Matter in the Jellyfish to rip it apart.”

It was crazy, but it was their best chance. Their only chance. Kirk took a deep breath.

“Ok, let’s get to work.”