#wrinklecat

(They aren’t actually doing Normal Campus Things, because they are who they are. 

Technically, Scotty barely avoided being put on academic probation—getting kicked out, actually—when he disappeared Admiral Archer’s prize beagle, and is still trying to cook up this warp theory for his senior Engineering project.  Only now it’s on the sly, so Archer doesn’t find out and literally expel him.  Chekov is helping him out in between shifts in the mathematics research lab.  Their rented conference space looks like a super computer threw up all over the walls.

Jim is in the middle of mediation over hacking the Kobayashi Maru and submitting his thoroughly researched logical/ethical/historically backed paper as to why he should morally and academically be allowed to do that.  (the paper was the only reason why Spock and Uhura didn’t turn him in immediately) (that and the idea of a no-win scenario actually being really traumatic for him)

Uhura is finalizing the coding on the Romulan language tutorial she made from scratch after teaching herself all three Romulan dialects by listening to subspace transmissions from the Romulan Empire, with a little help on the coding from Gaila.

Hikaru is finishing his piloting certification for some obscure Klingon vessel Jim bet him he couldn’t get done in the last two months before they graduated, because Jim is an asshole and of course I can fly it, are you kidding me?

Spock...okay Spock is doing normal things, like grading papers and filling out paperwork and looking at personnel for the Science division of the Enterprise. )

With basically the entire main fleet gone, the Academy’s number is up, and they’re largely getting put on the ships they’re flagged for post-graduation, because that’s just easier and means the captains won’t throw a fit.  Number One is with the Laurentian fleet because she’s always one of the first calls when shit is about to go sideways, so Pike just makes Spock his xo for the duration of the mission, figuring a Vulcan in a position of power is a good idea when the mission is about Vulcan, anyway.

(Spock: thisisfine.jpg)

Scotty is an engineering gremlin, but Olsen always appreciated his brand of crazy, so people are actually listening to him; Uhura gets put in communications; Bones is one of their chief medical officers, but he was no one’s first choice, because at this point he’s a kid with a gift not a man with fifteen years of experience; Jim is subbing in for a mid-level tactical officer somewhere in operations; Hikaru and Pavel are also on the bridge.

Pike eyes all three of them that are basically running his ship and decides he can worry about it later, after he has some fun with them by pretending not to know who Hikaru and Pavel are on sight.

Hikaru still bumbles going to warp, except this time it’s way worse because not a single damn one of them are going to let this go, ever.  he’s going to be ninety and Chekov will turn to him with a shit-eating grin and ask, “have you disengaged—” except he’s not going to finish that sentence because Hikaru will finally snap and strangle him.  this is going to be like when Jim couldn’t say “sawbones” correctly, and Hikaru’s saving grace is only that “external inertial damper” doesn’t lend itself well to nicknames.

(there’s a humming thrumming sense of destiny in the air, even though none of them know what’s coming yet; they’re all on a ship together, and that ship is the Enterprise, and all seven of them know this to be true.  If the back of Spock’s mind wasn’t a careful refrain of mothermothermothermother, they’d be positively giddy with it)

In the rush of preparing to see what the fuck is threatening a founding member of the Federation, the actual content of their mission doesn’t get read by anyone but Pike until they’re on the ship and Chekov opens it to read to the whole crew

and everything

stops.

At this point, they wouldn’t need psychic bonds to know what lightning storm in space means, not just because every one of them has heard about it their entire remembered life, but also....also, didn’t one of them dream about a lightning storm in space just last night (did all of them dream about it individually? who is remembering this?  sometimes their edges bleed together, and it has long since stopped troubling a single one of them that some thoughts don’t have a source, they just are).  A lightning storm, and flashes of angry, future Romulans.

Chekov pales more than Pike had thought possible, stumbles his way through the rest of the briefing, and then spins around in his chair so fast Pike feels dizzy.

Jim, Scotty, and Uhura fight the urge to slide into the space next to Spock, because they’re actually contributing to running a starship right now, but it doesn’t stop them from shouting “Captain!” Randomly right where they are, in sync with Hikaru, Pavel, and Spock on the bridge.

Said bridge is very startled by this, and Pike only has time to think, well, shit, before Spock is calmly but clearly laying out seven reasons why they’re absolutely fucked. 

He immediately turns to communications, to get a message to the seven ships that jumped ahead of them, to give them some warning, even though he’s pretty sure they must be there already.  These three genius young men have dug a pit for new and terrible dread in his stomach, and decades of experience are telling him this is going to be one of those moments.

Pike has a dawning feeling of, how about that, when his chief communications officer turns out to be useless, and the best person for the job turns out to be newly-Lieutenant Uhura, who is in the process of literally writing the book on the Romulan language.

There are no transmissions of any kind around Vulcan, let alone Romulan transmissions.

Jim lets his hands start working on autopilot and steps into the space next to Pavel, prompting him to repeat, “That’s because they’re being attacked.”

Red alert.

Everyone else stands stiffly in place except for Jim, who paces roughshod between four points on the bridge, four other pieces of himself; Spock lets his eyes follow Jim for those eternal seconds before them come into Vulcan space.

Before they come into Vulcan space in a graveyard. 

Uhura thinks Gaila so deeply they all hear it automatically, and Jim echoes it, Gaila, and it bounces among them all as Hikaru does an impossible thing so effortlessly it looks easy.

Spock still has mothermothermothermother running in the back of his mind,  but it doesn’t matter; he takes in the readings from his station, and glances at the six reports about the ship that have made their way to him as the XO since they took off, and relays the pertinent information to their captain.

When the Romulan vessel begins to fire on them, its...

It’s indescribable chaos.  All of them feel pulled in ever direction, as Engineering explodes around Scotty and Medical explodes even worse around Bones and Hikaru and Pavel work out critical evasive maneuvers and Uhura winces as their subspace communications array is completely obliterated; there’s no calling for help now (they’ll be lucky if they can reach Vulcan; they’ll be lucky if they survive)

They all tuck the sensation away for later consideration; perhaps they’ll all have to learn to block one another out, the way only Spock and Jim have so far.

As soon as it starts, though, it’s over, and Jim steps into the space next to Spock this time when Nero comes onto the viewfinder.

“Hi Christopher, I’m Nero,” angry Romulan says, and his name echoes in their minds.  (N e r o was waiting for me, someone says-thinks-remembers)

Jim bares his teeth at the angry Romulan in a non-human threat he picked up sometime during his lost years when that prick has the audacity to say Spock’s name, to know who Spock is, and Uhura fights the urge to mirror it in real space.

The second the call ends, Spock is in Pike’s face laying out why he absolutely cannot go on that fucking ship, at the very least because Spock is not qualified to command this vessel, Captain, having no prior command experience. 

Pike waves it off and points threateningly at Hikaru, telling him to come along and get Jim to come, too, because he needs people with advanced hand-to-hand combat experience.

—

Olsen dies from stupidity and Scotty winces, because that makes him one of the most qualified people on the ship left to run engineering.

Welcome to the club, pal, Bones mutters to him, having taken charge of Medical by force of will and virtue of being the only one left.  There’s no time to be nervous about the fact that he’s never been in charge of anything like this before; never held so many beings’ lives in his hands.  It’s do or die time, in the most literal sense. 

Spock doesn’t tell them to quit whining, try running the entire fucking ship, but he does raise an eyebrow that conveys the sentiment all the same.

They’re all struck still in sheer terror at the weight suddenly fallen on their shoulders.  People are dead.  People are dead and they’re in charge of the survivors and Vulcan is threatened and there’s another feeling with no source, a kind of countdown clock that started before they even entered Vulcan space.

Uhura runs a diagnostic on what’s left of their communications array and serves as a relay for short-range communication between other spacecraft above Vulcan; a bone-chilling wind rushes through her hair and flips her hood down before she can catch it and sunlight off the snow is blinding her but it’s still less painful than—

She blinks and she’s back at her station.

Huh.

—

“Olsen had the charges,” Sulu yells.

“I know,” Jim shouts back.

They fight the Romulans operating the drill; win; destroy the drill; watch some kind of capsule get launched into the resulting hole (Scotty takes a moment to see it go by and makes some more assumptions about where the hell these guys are from);

and then the drill lurches upward and Sulu stumbles back and falls and of course Jim launches himself after him.

and then all seven (seven?) of them are tumbling through the air and the vertigo is stifling; Spock deploys their chute but it breaks and Chekov is running the numbers, velocity and Vulcan’s gravitational pull and their relative height, when the transporter team calls out “I can’t lock on.”

I can do that, Chekov thinks, but he can’t—he’s falling they’re falling Hikaru is falling—

Calm, someone says.  Clear your minds.  And floods their shared mindscape with laser-like focus and the feeling of a deep breath on a clear day. 

All seven—seven?  no, not seven, not anymore—all eight of them slam abruptly into their own bodies again.  “I can do that!”  Chekov immediately shouts, springing up from his chair and sprinting off the bridge at full tilt.  Somewhere Hikaru and Jim are still falling, but it doesn’t consume him, consume them, like it was before.

How, Spock thinks—

Who? Uhura thinks—

Fuck! Jim thinks.

Chekov nearly shoves the transporter operator out of the way in his haste, but it doesn’t matter, nothing matters but this: he locks on, compensates for their velocity, and pulls his other halves back to safety.

Sulu and Jim crash onto the pad still clutching one another close.

We have little time, someone thinks.  Even now, the Enterprise’s sensors will tell you–

“They are creating a black hole at the center of Vulcan?” Spock says-thinks-broadcasts and Chekov, Jim, and Sulu snap into his space, horrified.  The bottom drops out of their collective stomachs and dread steadily grows in their veins like poison. It seeps into their lungs, their spines, their nerves.  A black hole.  Spock stands.  “How long does the planet have?”

How is that even possible? Sulu breathes, as Chekov starts muttering to himself to solve that very problem.

“Minutes, sir.  Maybe less.”

Jim knows what Spock’s thinking before he does and turns to him to say, “Send us down, we’re already here.  There’s no time.”  I won’t, I refuse, Jim thinks.  I won’t watch this happen again.

Spock looks for a long moment, a second, a lifetime, and nods to him, forgetting to even give the appearance of using real space.

“Alert Vulcan transport command center to signal a planetwide evacuation on all channels, all frequencies.  Also inform them that until Lieutenants Kirk and Sulu are ready to beam back with the elders, we can use the Enterprise’s transporter to help evacuate citizens ”  Uhura nods vaguely over her shoulder, already doing just that.  "Maintain standard orbit,” he adds to Sulu’s replacement.

Chekov pulls the coordinates for the Katric Arc from Spock’s mind and plugs them in, Jim and Sulu already waiting to be sent back.   The transporter operator makes some sort of noise, but they all ignore her and say “Energize” as one.

Hot, is all Jim can think as they materlize on the surface of Vulcan.  All he allows himself to think; there’s no time to think of anything else.  They race up the side of the mountain to the entrance to the katric ark.  This is sacred Vulcan knowledge, the location of this monumental part of Vulcan culture and history; their entrance, their swift flight through the twisting tunnels deeper and deeper into the rock, is singular in the history of the Vulcan race.  No outsider has ever set foot here before.

Except, Jim sees as he and Sulu stumble to a halt, for Amanda Grayson.

She is not really an outsider, though, Chekov thinks, but Jim ignores him.

“My name is Lieutenant James Tiberius Kirk,” Jim says and offers a ta’al.  Amanda—mother—Amanda’s eyes widen in recognition as she stands and turns towards them.  “The planet has only seconds left, we have to evacuate now.”

Without missing a beat, Amanda reaches out to take Sulu’s outstretched hand, and Serek takes a step in their direction.  When none of the elders protest, Sulu turns and runs back the way they came with Amanda’s arm tucked into his side.  Jim wait for all of the elders to run ahead of him before following, pulling one of them back by the collar of his robes when he tries to run headlong into a falling statue.  He harries them from behind, in a way that would make Spock choke if he could here it, but it doesn’t matter all that matters is that they move faster faster faster.

Uhura and Spock glance out the viewscreen on the bridge to catch dozens of tiny vessels streaming off of the surface of Vulcan in all direction.  Faster, you must move faster, Spock thinks, illogically.  He feels that somehow they must not grasp the urgency, otherwise more people would be leaving, but that is illogical as well.  His own anger, confusion, and fear are clouding his judgement already and the planet has not even—

The captain’s chair pings with another notification of Vulcans safely transported aboard; security officers are overseeing their transfer to another part of the ship.  In his mind he feels Bones—Lieutenant—Doctor McCoy grimly triaging medical care and takes a deep breath to copy his steady demeanor.  There is no time.

“Kirk to Enterprise, beam us out of here!  Ten to transport.”  Winds reaching 50 kilometers per hours, easy, whip around them as, presumably, the atmosphere and magnetic field of Vulcan fluctuate with the consumption of its core.  Out of nowhere, Jim thinks wildly that science division must be having a field day registering all of this data.  In a flash he realizes that this is a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event: every iota of information they see or collect will be studied for the rest of their lives.  Jesus H. fucking christ, Jim thinks to himself, not the fucking time.

“Stay close to me,” Sulu warns as Amanda tries to take a step towards the edge.  “This whole place is about to go.”

Chekov repeats that advice over comms, not that the Vulcans can hear it.  “Don’t move, stay right where you are.”

They all stand as the winds rise and the ground crumbles beneath their feet.  The horizon is sinking in on itself, disappearing down into the—into the—into the black hole forming beneath their feet.  Their eyes can’t focus on it for too long, some deep primal instinct forcing them to gaze at the rock crumbling that much closer to them as they feel the Enterprise’s transporter lock on.  Come on, come on, come on, Sulu chants in his mind, and JIm echoes it.  There’s almost nothing to look at, now, its all tearing down, down, down, so close to close not even a hundred yards away.

Come on, come on, come on come on comeoncomeoncomeon—

Jim gasps for breath as they materialize onto a familiar platform.  The Enterprise.  If Spock’s mom weren’t two pods over he’d probably kiss the floor right now; he might do it anyway if the state of his knees are any indication.  Tension and fear had drawn his muscles so tight that relaxing them feels like cutting all his strings at once and then asking him to stay upright.

A security officer materializes from out of nowhere and asks the elders which of them need medical attention; Sulu finally relaxes, too, now that someone else has them covered.  Dear god.  Holy fuck.  That’s all he’s got left, holy fuck, terror has fucking subsumed him.  There aren’t words for this.  Count him out for the next thirty seconds, thanks,

Chekov finally relinquishes the transporter to it’s actual officer and notices that Mrs. Grayson says she does not require medical attention.  Good.  That means that Spock can see her.  He awkwardly waves at her to catch her attention and steps forward.  “Your son—Spock—Lieu—I mean, the captain would like to see you right away, I think.  If you would like to come with the bridge with me.  Ma’am.”

There’s something breathless in her eyes, vestiges of a wild terror unlike anything Pavel has ever seen or felt.  Her gaze flits up and down, cataloguing every detail of his person, before meeting his own.  “Pavel?”  She says lowly.

“Uh.  Yes.  Ma’am.  Would you..?” He offers his arm just like Sulu did, and she takes it with more strength than he was expecting.  Too much, actually, it is almost painful, but he doesn’t mention it as he leads her from the room to the corridors. 

They walk in silence, occasionally stepping to the side to let someone else pass at a dead run, which is an understandable pace.  There is no other speed to travel right now.

“Captain?”  Mrs. Grayson says, and it takes a moment to register it as a question.

“Yes.  Captain Pike is—well,” Pavel immediately realizes he maybe shouldn’t say that to someone who isn’t Starfleet, but this is Spock’s mother, so, perhaps he will be forgiven, “he left Lieutenant Spock in charge.  Captain Spock was first officer; now he is Captain, and Lieutenant Kirk is first officer.”

“I see,” Mrs. Grayson says, and Pavel reaches his other hand over to clutch her arm that much tighter.

They enter the bridge together, but no one notices.  Activity has come to a complete standstill; every pair of eyes is turned to the viewscreen, even Uhura’s, even Spock’s, and Pavel can see—he can see—

It is unfathomable. 

Vulcan’s outer crust is rapidly collapsing inward, its inner and outer core having already been consumed.  He catches flashes of lightning in the crumbling mass but the bulk of the black hole is invisible to the naked eye, covered as it is by the remains of one of the founding members of the Federation.

His breath catches in his throat as Vulcan winks out of existence.  There is—there is nothing left.  Empty space remains.  He thinks, surely not, this is impossible, where did it go?

But there is nothing.  Nothing.

Someone whimpers; another person sobs.  Spock is perfectly still in the captain’s chair.

Mrs. Grayson’s hand tightens to the point of bruising.  Tomorrow he will inspect himself and find the perfect imprint of all five fingers on his arm.  But he says nothing and instead squeezes right back.

“Captain, I—” Chekov’s replacement clears her throat when her voice cuts out.  “The...the singularity is gone.  There are no more gravitational distortions.  We don’t have enough data to see whether it was created to last a certain time, or if its size was calculated to be just enough to consume the—the planet, or—”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Spock cuts her off and stands.  His voice is so faint and Chekov can barely feel him in his mind.

Mrs. Grayson squeezes his arm one last time and then lets him go; Chekov fights the urge to take her hand and keep her at his side.  Without her he suddenly feels incapable of standing here and seeing this gaping wound in space a moment longer.

“Spock,” she says.  “Spock.”

He does not turn.  He stares out the viewfinder.  Everyone else tears their eyes away, either to him or his mother or their stations, but his remain fixed on it.

“Spock, my darling, my son,” she reaches her hands out toward him even as he keeps his gaze fixed on the nothingness, “please.”

Leonard appears next to Spock.  Blood is smeared across the front of his shirt and nearly drips from his gloved hands, but he pays it no mind.  He steps in front of Spock and blocks his line of sight, then gently takes hold of his shoulders and turns him bodily to his mother.  Chekov sees the exact moment Spock’s eyes meet his mothers, feels Spock’s breath hitch in his own chest, and nearly sobs for him.

His presence in Pavel’s mind is not so faint, now.  Now it rages, surging through him—through them all—like a tsunami of anger-confusion-loneliness-fear.  Or not a tsunami, because it does not stop, it keeps going and going and going.  It is not a tsunami, it is a river, a lake, a waterfall, an ocean.  It is—

Spock takes three swift steps to close the distance between them and collapses into his mother’s arms.

She wraps herself around him, and he around her, and the whole of their worlds narrow down to each other.

The rest of the bridge remains silent, though most of them look away.  What can they do?  What do you do with this?  How do you move on from the nothingness?  Perhaps they will remain here forever to fill the void left by Vulcan.

Hands close around the tops of Chekov’s arms and he nearly jumps out of his skin, but it is only Jim.  Jim.  Gentle, gentle hands, so soft compared to Mrs. Grayson’s, and Chekov leans back into him for a moment.  “......” he takes a deep breath, tries to say something, but there is nothing.  There is nothing inside him, there is nothing in front of him. 

What do they do?

Jim lets his head rest on the back of Chekov’s for a moment, then releases him entirely.  “Lieutenant Chekov, return to your post,” he says at volume, and Chekov straightens.  Yes.  He can do that.

The bridge turns to look at Jim, now; all but Spock and Mrs. Grayson, who remain entwined.  Spock shoulders are shaking, but his head is tucked into his mother’s shoulder so Chekov cannot see if he weeps.  Mrs. Grayson is weeping; it glistens on her face.

Jim takes a deep breath and steps forward.  “Lieutenant Uhura, get in touch with every other ship of evacuees, I want a full accounting for every Vulcan who got off planet in time.  Make sure the ships have what they need to sustain their passengers for at least the next day; if they don’t, contact the transporter bay and get them over here immediately.”

Uhura nods and turns back to her station, flipping switches and spitting out rapid-fire Vulcan.

“Lieutenant Perkins.”  The other communications officer on the bridge startles and turns to him.  “Survey our long range communications equipment; give me a status update as soon as you know what went wrong and how we can fix it.  We need to contact Starfleet ASAP.”

Other people start to turn back to their stations, too, and the volume on the bridge rises in fits and starts as conversation flows.  Finally, Jim turns to Spock and his mother.

“Dr. Grayson,” he says softly, stepping into their space.  Spock finally tenses and lifts his head; he tries to pull away but his mother obviously tightens her arms around him and refuses to let go.  “Your husband should be in the medbay with the Vulcan elders; I think some of them are being treated for psychic shock.”  She nods at the implicit suggestion that she join him.

“Spock,” Jim says, then pauses.  Oh, fuck it, he thinks, and places his hands carefully on either side of Spock’s face.  Dr. Grayson takes a sharp breath, probably at how intimate the gesture is for a Vulcan, but Jim ignores her for a second.  He lets his forehead leans against Spock’s for just a moment, and their eyes close as one.

I grieve with thee, he thinks, a current of i-love-you-i-love-you-anger-confusion-i-love-you-we-love-you running between their minds. 

“I know,” Spock murmurs, his voice hoarse with grief.  He pulls away from Jim and his mother both, then offers his mother his arm.  “Lieutenant Kirk, you have the conn,” he says loudly, and departs swiftly.  In the blink of an eye, Jim Kirk is in charge of the Enterprise. 

He takes three slow, careful steps to the chair and takes stock.

Bones is elbows deep in someone who took a piece of metal to the lungs in the earlier firefight. 

Scotty is telling half a dozen people who weren’t prepared for this (none of them were prepares for this) how to do jobs they wouldn’t have gotten in another ten years, normally; he’s also thirty feet off the ground in a harness, doing emergency repairs on something that keeps their nacelles from blowing up.

Sulu is even now making his way to the bridge; he stopped to have a freakout for two minutes in some abandoned corridor between there and the transporter room.

Spock is shaking with grief and anger, bone-deep anger that Jim recognizes in his bones, too.  But his mother has him; thank god, his mother has him.

Uhura and Chekov are with him, here.

And...

Cold.  Cold, so cold, as cold as Vulcan was hot; snow seeps through his pants to his knees and the frigidness makes his knees ache more than they normally do.  But that is nothing compared to the grief—to be made to watch as Vulcan was destroyed is cruelty beyond anything he has experienced before.  How much is lost?  How much history, how many people?  He is lost, everything is lost—

Jim pulls himself away from their new, eighth half as he sinks into the captain’s chair.  “Commander Hannity, are there any other inhabited planets in this system?”

Hannity types something into her station and calls over her shoulder, “Just one, sir, a class M planet called Delta Vega.  There’s a starfleet outpost stationed there.”

“Sir,” Lieutenant Sufe interrupts.  “The gravity network in this system is destabilizing; the loss of Vulcan is throwing everything out of balance.”

A thousand different thoughts flit through his mind.  “Right.  Okay.  Lieutenant Sulu,” he says as Sulu finally comes through the entrance to the bridge, “Scan Delta Vega for life signs, I want to know where everyone is.  We’re going to have to evacuate the planet just to be safe.

“Everyone,” he calls out, “I want updates from every department over the next hour; casualty reports, equipment status updates, and time to normal operation resumption.”  A few yes, captain-s, float back to him and he blinks.  Captain.  Sure.  Okay.

“Lieutenant Uhura, open a ship-wide channel when you get a second.”

—

Leonard catches Spock and his mother as soon as they enter the Medbay and waves them into an office.  “I’ll send Sarek over as soon as he gets checked out, don’t worry,” he yells over his shoulder as he moves onto the next task.  A doctor’s work is never done in a crisis, it seems.

This was most likely Dr. Puri’s office; Spock supposes it must be Leonard’s, now, as he is acting Chief Medical Officer on the Enterprise. Just as Spock is acting captain. 

That seems a poorer and poorer idea by the second, on multiple levels.

He and his mother slowly sink onto the couch as the door to the office slides shut.  He slowly puts an arm over her shoulders, pulling her close enough to rest her head on his shoulder, close enough then for him to rest his head on hers.  Together, they breathe.

“Oh, Spock,” she whispers, and begins to sob.  It is a display of gross emotion unlike any other he has ever experienced from her in his entire life; she has always done her best to remain circumspect in her emotive behavior.

This is not the time for circumspection. 

“Mother,” he whispers back.  “I do not know how to express...this.  This cataclysm of emotions.  It is overwhelming.”

She sniffs and continues to cry.  “Neither do I.  It’s—there are no words for this kind of grief, Spock.  At least, none that I can recall at the moment.”  Her breath shudders in and out, and Spock chest aches in sympathy.

“I feel...confused.  Lonely.  Fearful.  And I feel so much anger,” he slowly teases out the many threads tangled inside him.  “For the one who has destroyed our home and our people.  An anger I cannot control.”

“You don’t have to control it.  Not now, not here.  Sometimes things happen and the only way to get through them is to feel it.  It’s the only way to process.” She sniffs again, and laughs wetly.  “Your father may have a different answer, I don’t know.  But I think this is too much for anyone to keep a handle on.”

“I am acting captain of this ship, I must regain control of my emotions so I can lead us through this crisis.”  Even now, things are happening without him that should not be.  He should be on the bridge, not hiding away with his mother.

His mother hums.  “There isn’t anyone else who can do that?”  Spock opens his mouth, hesitates. 

“I—we have no communication with Starfleet, this vessel is staffed almost entirely by people who have not yet graduated from Starfleet Academy.  I am perhaps the most experienced officer aboard the Enterprise at the moment.  It is my duty to serve.”

“No,” she says shortly.  “In any other instance, yes, but Spock, this isn’t...” she trails off and sits up, turns to look him in the eye.  “They can’t ask that of you today.  Or tomorrow.  You just lost your planet, Spock.  Your home.  Your people,” her voice breaks.  “They cannot expect this kind of rational behavior of you.  There is no regulation worth the name that can demand service of you in these circumstances.”

Spock studies her face and sees trace markers of anger in her expression.  This notion that he must set his emotions aside for the good of the many has angered her.

“Spock,” she tries again.  “This was genocide.  They can find someone else to lead, in the face of that.”  Her hand reaches out and touches his face.

So young, he catches, though he thinks she doesn’t mean to broadcast it.  Too young for this.

Now his breath is shuddering as well.  It rips out of his chest in shorter and shorter intervals before he can stop it and tears drip, drip, drip down his face.  A grief too terrible to name wells up inside him and the only release valve is in his eyes, it seems.

One by one, they appear around him and his mother.  First Nyota, then Leonard, Scotty, Pavel, Hikaru, Jim.  And the faintest glimmer of someone new in the corner of his eye that he can’t quite see.  Leonard grips his shoulder and Nyota reaches out to lay a hand on his neck and they pull him up and into their midst.

“It’s okay, we’ve got this.  Stay,” Nyota says.  “Stay as long as you need.”

Spock raises his head and meets Jim’s eye.

Jim nods to him.  “I’ve got this, Spock.  Stay with your mother; we’ll hunt this bastard down for you.  Trust me.”

“Blow him to kingdom fucking come,” Hikaru mutters, and Chekov says something Russian in agreement.

He takes a deep breath in and focuses on the sensation of air stretching his lungs to their full capacity.  He slowly lets it out and catalogues the sensation of it moving through his mouth, slightly cool; the brief lightheaded feeling fades as soon as it arrives.

“Spock?”  His mother asks from behind him.

“You will let me know as soon as you have a plan,” he instructs Jim.  Jim always has a plan; he will have one now, soon enough.  It will be statistically unlikely to succeed, as his plans always are, and yet will succeed as his plans always do. 

The others all sigh with relief, all reaching out to touch him in some manner, and step back to their own real space.  Spock sinks back onto the couch next to his mother.

“You are correct, mother.  There is someone else.”

—

It takes four hours for Uhura, and also, once she’s out of treatment, fucking T’Pau, jesus chirst, to coordinate the thirty-six Vulcsn vessels that managed to make it off planet before it imploded.  Twelve of them don’t have the capacity to sustain their passengers for long; three fly over to dock with the Enterprise and the rest beam their passengers over.  The remaining ships indicate they will make their way to the nearest inhabited Federation planet on their own; the Enterprise has another destiny today. 

Nearly every Vulcan who beamed directly from the surface to the ship before it was too late were children.  A disproportionate number of those on the ships were children as well.  It was only logical, to ensure the future of their race survived over all others.  Some security officers and a few Vulcan adults who aren’t catatonic with grief organize a kind of nursery-babysitting routine to keep them occupied and accounted for.

Engineering is no longer actively on fire; Perkins figured out how to jerry-rig something for communications to get their long range systems back online; Medical continues to rush onward in crisis mode, but every person who requires surgery has been taken care of.

Delta Vega finally managed to get everyone on-planet to its Starfleet outpost, and is ready to abandon the surface to beam to the Enterprise.  Jim gives Sulu the conn and gets up from the chair, feeling all the little bones in his hand that got shattered by that Romulan asshole twinge.  Or, you know, scream in pain.  Whatever, it’s not important.

He has to be there when their eighth half arrives, he has to.  His feet carry him to the transporter room like something out of a dream, tired and still half out of his mind with Spock’s grief, with all their grief (Gaila).

Someone beams onboard with the first round, an alien species Jim doesn’t recognize but wearing a badge he does: a commander, in engineering at that.  Thank god.  “Report to engineering,” Jim tells him shortly.  “Find Scotty, he’ll know what to do.”  The commander, who’s literally half Jim’s height, he feels it’s important to point out, just nods and walks past him, apparently to find Scotty in engineering.

Well.  Good.  Alright, that was easy. 

The man he’s waiting for materializes in the next round, one of only two people left, but Jim can’t even look at the other person.  He’s only got eyes for him; older Vulcan, a hundred years old easy if he’s a day, but his eyes are so familiar.  It feels like he’s floating on air, being pulled closer like a tractor beam.

“James T. Kirk,” the old Vulcan says, his voice wavering with awe and grief and age, and offers a ta’al.

“Who are you?”  Jim asks.

“I am, and always shall be, your friend.” He says simply.  But Jim can feel it, deep in his bones, as true to him as Spock’s anger was earlier.  It’s fundamental to his existence, now, that this man is his friend, cemented truth for the telling of it; he doesn’t remember meeting the others like this, they always just were there.  Was it this visceral?  Did he understand, as a toddler, how monumental those moments were?

“What’s your name?”

“Ah, yes.  I am Spock.”

Jim’s eyes widen, nearly bulge out of his head.  “Uh?  What?” The fuck, he adds silently, except Old-Spock can hear it, of course.

But Old-Spock just raises an eyebrow in response and says, “Indeed.”

Right.

Okay.

“We have much to discuss, old friend.  Perhaps you could lead us to the bridge, so I can relay to you what I know about Nero.”

Jim zeroes in on that like a hawk, and gets the sense that Old-Spock was expecting that reaction.

“Yes, let’s,” he says, and gestures for the door.  There’s still work to be done.

—

Six weeks later, now-Admiral Pike sits across from Admiral Barrett, smiling the tight amused smile of someone who’s refusing to admit that they’re fucking crazy.

“Are you insane?”  Barrett asks, placing his hands on his desk and leaning forward for emphasis.  “Chris.  For god’s sake tell me you understand that Jim Kirk is twenty-two fucking years old.  You cannot make a twenty-two year old human man a captain, let alone put him in charge of the flagship!  Absolutely not.  What could possibly make you think this is a good idea?”

“I was thinking that Spock said no first.”

Barrett makes some kind of half-strangled screeching sound, the kind Chris has missed hearing since their time together at the academy.  It’s the little things that get him through the day, now.

“Chris, we can’t.”

“We don’t have a choice, Richard.”  Pike finally lets his smile drop and leans forward, clutching his cane in one hand to keep his balance.  “You know exactly how many people we lost on those seven ships Nero destroyed.  There just aren’t enough qualified personnel to go around anymore.  Romulus and Kronos are already sniffing around looking for any sign of weakness they can prey on, and Marcus is just itching to respond in kind.”  Barrett cuts him a look at that, but he presses on.  “We can’t afford not to promote the people who managed to not only coordinate rescue efforts of nearly 15,000 Vulcans as the planet was literally collapsing, but also pursue and take out the man and ship from the future who were responsible.   That kind of skill, that kind of luck, would be wasted anywhere else.  Anything else would be a criminal waste of talent we  don’t have to spare anymore.”

Barrett sighs, deeply, and rubs his eyes.  “He’s too young for this,” he repeats, and Pike knows he doesn’t mean inexperienced this time, but instead too young to have to bear it. “This is a terrible idea.”

“Yeah, well.” Pike leans back.  “It’s necessary.”

They sit in silence for a moment.

“Look, we’ll ride herd on his ass so closely he doesn’t have the room to fuck up.  Give ‘em a few diplomatic or transport milk runs they couldn’t mess up if they tried to work out all the kinks.”

“Oh no, don’t drag me into this.  You,” he jabs his finger at Pike, “will ride herd on his ass, Christopher Pike, and I don’t want to hear a damn thing about it other than that it’s working as planned.”

“Sure,” Pike smiles again, wryly, “because these things always go as planned.”

Barrett sighs again.  “So, what, I assume Spock will be his first officer.   Who were you thinking for the rest of the command crew?”

A terrible, awful, horrible grin stretches across Pike’s face in response and Barrett curses.  “Fucking hell.  Really?  All of them?”

“Really,” Pike says cheerfully.  “All of them.  Look at what they’ve done so far, and then imagine everything they could accomplish together, Richard.  They’re going to be the crew that defines the next two decades of Starfleet service, easy.”  He finally passes the data pad with their promotion papers over, secure in the knowledge Barrett isn’t going to just chuck then out of a window now.

“This is insanity,”  Barrett mutters to himself.

“No,” Pike corrects, “it’s an act of faith.”

—