Disclaimer: Unfortunately I own nothing regarding Star Trek, the characters or universes. I'm merely borrowing them to play with.

Dah'es

James Kirk was beginning to regret choosing the steak for dinner. It was slowly going to waste as he sat contemplating the ship's current state of affairs in the nearly empty dining commons. The only other occupant was a lone cadet perched at a table reviewing a PADD. Next to the cadet sat a dinner as neglected as his own.

The Enterprise was limping back to Earth for extensive repairs following the battle with The Narada; several crew members were laid up in sickbay being hassled back to health by the good doctor McCoy and those well enough to work, were doing their utmost to keep the ship running until they arrived at dock. He himself had an unimaginable amount of forms and reports that needed filing; he was currently avoiding his desk in the hopes that they would either magically file themselves or failing that wonderful hope, that Star Fleet would decide paperwork was not a number one priority. He wasn't holding his breath.

Kirk absentmindedly toyed with the lettuce gracing the side of his plate. The salad was his one concession to McCoy in an attempt to at least appear as though he were trying to be healthy and so he had loaded up on broccoli and carrots despite hating the stuff. The doctor was running a very full sickbay with little assistance and a swiftly diminishing stock of medical supplies. He certainly wasn't interested in seeing repeat customers at the moment. And particularly not because said customer wasn't eating properly. Kirk wasn't sure why he had bothered at this point however; McCoy wasn't there to appreciate the sacrifice and even he himself could admit that playing with the veggies didn't have quite the same effect as eating them.

The acting Captain had swung through sickbay earlier so that McCoy could look at the bruises, abrasions and various other minor injuries that he had accumulated in the course of his multiple fights with the Romulans, his brief marooning on Delta Vega and the altercation with Spock. Bones had gruffly declared him fit enough for duty and he'd been sent on his way with a hypo spray of pain killers and anti-inflammatory meds jabbed in to the side of his neck, along with instructions to come back if his throat started to feel like it was swelling.

Before he'd left, Kirk had tried to see how Captain Pike was doing; Bones had informed him quite shortly that he was still alive but was currently unconscious; he made it very clear that this could only be a blessing at this point. Followed with an exasperated query as to whether or not the acting Captain had a ship to run, and would he mind getting the hell out of his sickbay and allowing the person with the medical degree to see to actual SICK people.

'And try to keep your neck away from any more pissed off people or aliens…at least until those bruises fade.' had been barked at his back as he exited.

Jim wandered the decks for bit then, here and there examining damage to the ship and surveying the crew about the progress of repairs, but had eventually given in to the angry protests from his stomach and made his way to the dining commons in search of dinner. He couldn't remember when he had eaten last. Surveying the options offered by the replicator, he decided the steak sounded like a pleasant distraction from his thoughts and he looked forward to merely sitting and enjoying dinner. A couple of bites into the meal however, and the replicated meat had settled like stones in his gut. He found that he couldn't continue.

His thoughts had started to drift towards the Vulcan currently running the bridge and the fragile truce they were operating under. Jim felt horrible about the loss of control he had forced upon the man, particularly after the destruction of his home planet. He could not and would not however, feel bad about the fact that they had managed to both destroy the Romulan threat and save Earth; something that may not have been achieved had they followed Spock's command. Despite this he was still wary of the other man and hesitant to invade his space at the moment; this was partly why he wasn't currently on the bridge where he very badly wanted to be. Part of this unspoken truce included trusting the Commander to do his job, something he did very well. Jim wouldn't hesitate to testify to that fact.

He supposed part of his reluctance to deal with the Commander came from his interactions with Spock's older counterpart on the ice planet and it wasn't entirely fair to place that burden upon the younger version. Not that this fact was slowing the steady burn of annoyance that had ruined the dinner now cooled on the tray in front of him, but if he was being truly magnanimous, he supposed he ought to cut the guy some slack. After all, he didn't know they had been good pals in some alternate universe; one that Kirk was seriously starting to regret ever having been privy too.

It didn't help that every time he came into contact with his First Officer, he'd forget that they hadn't been friends for years. It was jarring to realize that someone he felt so instinctively comfortable around was in essence a stranger. Kirk was constantly hit with blunt reminders that, while it appeared at least the Vulcan no longer merely tolerated him, they certainly weren't going to be going on shore leave together anytime in the near future.

Contacting the Ambassador and demanding he wipe away the unwanted memories was a thought the captain had been toying with, but getting a hold of the older Spock whilst he was trying to find a replacement home for the remainder of his people, was a difficulty he didn't feel like pursuing presently. Besides which, he was having a hard time justifying to himself the interruption of the regrouping process with something as trivial as memories. Even if they weren't technically his own. Jim could picture that disastrous exchange.

'Sorry to bother you; while I realize that you've lost your planet along with most of your people, I was wondering if you'd mind just taking a couple of minutes to fix whatever it was that you scrambled. I keep thinking we're friends when I don't even know you. '

He snorted to himself. Oh that would certainly go over well. And yet...it just about summed up the whole problem, didn't it. The sense of friendship he caught glimpses of during the mind meld on Delta Vega had just felt so…right. He just couldn't reconcile it with the sort of working relationship he had with the younger Spock. And the fact that he had to differentiate between the two versions at all was enough to keep him feeling out of balance. But this coupled with the effort of remembering to not mention anything regarding his encounter with the Ambassador was also tiring; especially when he kept starting to say something to Commander Spock that he really wanted to say to the Ambassador.

Kirk supposed that eventually he would have to learn to come to grips with the contrast in personalities between the younger Spock and the Ambassador and deal with the fact that the closeness he had felt with the older Spock during and since the mind meld flat out did not exist between himself and the Commander; or himself and the Ambassador for the matter. The only other options he could think of included pulling the older Spock away from his important work on the Vulcan colony or continuously having to deal with the unexpected pangs of loss he kept feeling at seemingly random intervals during his dealings with the younger Spock. Frankly it unnerved him and this had been in large, the reason he had left the Vulcan to watch the bridge.

Giving up on the steak entirely, Jim deposited the meal in the proper receptacle and aiming a brief nod in the direction of the cadet now standing at attention for him, he slowly made his way back to the quarters that had been assigned to him. Even with a number of Vulcan refugees on board, there was still space to house a stow-away. It had taken awhile to get a bunk cleared for him as the officer in charge of sleeping assignments had been injured in the initial attack by Nero, but once a replacement officer had been identified and notified of the situation, Jim had been escorted to his assigned room in short order.

The officer had done his best to locate Kirk as close to the other commanding officers as he could and was rather apologetic with the resulting assignment, but as long as he didn't have to sleep on the floor, Jim wouldn't have cared if he wound up in the bowels of the ship.

As he stood in the lift lit only with emergency spotlights, he reminded himself that he needed to check with Scotty on the progress of the repairs in engineering, although it was something that could certainly wait until his next shift. He supposed if anything critical occurred prior to then, he'd be sure to hear about it.

Making it to his room, he pulled off his Star Fleet issue undershirt and pants, ordered the computers to dim the lights and settled in to his bunk. He lay staring at the ceiling and tried to catalog the ship's myriad of issues so as to verify the status of each during his next shift; instead he found his thoughts moving towards the fleeting images and feelings he had gotten from the Ambassador in between those of a Romulan driven insane with heartbreak and a planet imploding.

Eventually lulled towards sleep with pleasant images from another man's lifetime, his mind slowed and Jim slept.

AN: This is the first fic that I've written and posted. Constructive criticism is most definitely welcome.

As of 12/29/09 I've gone back over this chapter and corrected some inconsistencies, most important of which is the location of Ambassador Spock. He's no longer building a New Vulcan all by his lonesome somewhere in space.

I don't have a beta, so all mistakes are mine. And lastly, thanks for reading.