"So you'll bond with him?" Uhura asked. "In spite of everything, you'll take him back and spend the rest of your life connected to him?"

T'Khio'ri looked at her with kind, laughing, knowing eyes. All her years with Spock, and the more than half a year she had spent with his counterpart, had not accustomed Uhura to seeing such obvious expression on a Vulcan face.

"You are still young, Nyota Uhura," the ambassador told her. "Your love is still young, though it is deep. And your pride is still strong. If you had to live as long as I did, waiting for your Spock, the love would overpower the pride and you would never wish to send him away. In spite of everything."

Uhura sighed. The woman before her had waited for the man she loved through countless years and missed opportunities and even through his near-bonding with another. Really, T'Khio'ri had suffered a lot more than Uhura had on the path to love. And she was still willing to give it a chance.

"I just want to be sure of him," she admitted, staring at the table between them. "I need to know that taking the risk is worth it. I don't want to be hurt again."

A warm hand enveloped hers, and she looked up in the Vulcan's smooth brown face.

"You can be sure of nothing, Nyota," T'Khio'ri told her. "There is always risk in love. Accept right now that there will be times when he will hurt you, just as there will be times when you will hurt him. An important part of loving someone is learning to move beyond the hurt."

"You did a good job, Jim," Admiral Pike told him. He smiled widely out of the viewscreen. "Didn't I tell you they'd figure it out eventually? All they needed was to see how you handled yourself in a tricky situation. Your part in the negotiations with the colonists proved you were more than a one-hit wonder. You showed them you can be diplomatic when needed, but, more importantly, you showed them you're a real commander."

Kirk smiled back at his mentor, but to tell the truth, he wasn't sure how happy he was about the news. It was great that Starfleet Command was finally going to let the Enterprise serve as something more than a glorified ferry service and head nanny, but the timing could have been better.

Uhura was committed to the Vulcans for another six months and he knew Spock hadn't quite patched things up with her yet. He wasn't looking forward to three months in the neutral zone with a cranky Vulcan on board.

"Thank you, sir," he said because there was nothing else to say.

It wasn't like he could have said, "I'm sorry, sir, but we can't except this mission until my first officer finishes groveling at his girlfriend's feet. And since we're waiting anyway, I'd like to hold off until she's back on board because her replacement bores the whole bridge crew to tears every Alpha shift. If we have to take much more of him, someone might try to execute the guy and I just don't want the responsibility of seeing one of my crew punished for doing what all of want to do anyway."

Starfleet Command probably didn't take kindly to statements like that. Not even Christopher Pike was that understanding. And the USS Reliant was long overdue for relief.

After Pike ended the communication, Kirk dropped his head into his hands. He really wasn't looking forward to calling Spock back to the ship.

You're the one who wanted to be captain, a voice in his head reminded him. Sometimes you've got to make the hard choices. Ensuring good of the many takes precedence over securing the happiness of the few.

"Which is the same fucking mindset that got Spock into this mess," he said aloud. "Sometimes being captain sucks."

Spock stood in Nyota's quarters, a packed duffle at his feet. He did not have to be at the beam-up point for another thirty minutes, and he was determined to spend as much of that time as was possible convincing her he was a changed Vulcan.

"I will not give up on you, ashayam," he whispered into her hair.

She did not lift her face from his chest.

"But you would have," she murmured, pressing closer to him. Her voice was shaking.

He held her tighter as well.

"I will not," he said.

"Because you think you can't." It was important to hear him acknowledge the truth of it. "You would, but you can't. So you will hold on."

He did not answer right away. Her pain washed between them. Knowing that speaking the truth would not lessen her anguish hurt him.

"I will not because I do not wish to," he repeated. Silently he begged for it to be enough. "For as long as you wish it, beloved, I am yours."

She turned her head so that her cheek rested against his breastbone. Her voice was clear and steady when she asked, "Forever?"

He shuddered — with relief, with gratitude and with no small measure of shame — in awe of this woman who was strong enough to trust him again in spite of his mistakes, who chose not to walk away.

"Forever," he echoed, his voice garbled and unsteady.

A cool hand snaked up his chest and past his neck to stroke his jaw.

"It's enough," she told him.

Spock's lips found hers and did not leave them again until they were breathless and it was nearly time for him to rush over to the transportation site. He mentally frowned at the colony's lack of its own transporter facilities. Nyota laughed into the crook of his neck.

"That's one of the things Sarek wants to change," she told him. "If Vulcans are going to be less isolated this time around, they will need to build transporters on the colony. It'll get done, k'diwa."

He grimaced for real this time.

"That does not give me more time with you now, beloved," he complained.

Nyota rose on her toes and pressed her lips against his once more.

"Three months," she reminded him as she dropped back down. "And just another three after that before I'm back on the Enterprise."

He rested his forehead against hers.

"I will be waiting for you, ashayam."

Bones hadn't known what he was expecting to hear when the Enterprise's first officer had requested a private meeting in the doctor's quarters, but he knew for damned sure this wasn't it.

That Spock and Ms. Uhura were planning marry and bond at the end of the Enterprise's five-year mission wasn't that big of a shock — anyone with half a brain could have seen that one coming. The half-Vulcan had been damned-near cheerful since getting back on the ship a week ago.

But, this other thing — damn it, the overgrown elf just couldn't go around asking things like that.

"Me!" he snapped. "Why the hell are you asking me? Why not ask the other Spock"

Spock raised a mocking brow.

"You believe it would be appropriate for me to act as my own best man?" he asked.

"I don't even like you!"

"I have it on good authority that you do," Spock replied.

"Now Spock, a genius like you oughta know better than to trust anything a woman in love has to say about her friends," McCoy protested. "They want everyone to see sunshine and roses just like they do."

Spock's lips twitched up. "While Nyota has assured me of your essential good nature numerous times," he said, "she is not the authority to which I was referring."

Nonplussed, Bones gaped at the half-Vulcan.

"Well, who the hell else has been telling tales behind my back?" he demanded. "Never mind. Look, you don't want someone with my track record standing up for you. My ex took everything in the divorce and left me with nothing but my skeleton and an appreciation for bourbon. I'd probably get sloshed right before the ceremony and lose the rings."

"I am aware that the responsibilities of a best man traditionally include advising and supporting the groom in the time before the wedding," was Spock's rather dry response. McCoy was too flustered to notice that he had avoided answering the question. "You have already made an adequate start on fulfilling those duties, both when you suggested that I consider the unhappy results of your own marriage, and just now, in your attempts to dissuade me from my choice. And, of course, your other argument also lacks merit, doctor."

Bones blinked, unsure of what the green-blooded elf might say next.

"If my counterpart could trust yours to hold his katra," Spock told him, "I believe I can trust you to hold onto the rings."

For the first time in recent memory, Bones struggled to find a snappy comeback.

"Well, uh, fine," he managed. "Three years can be a long time. If you haven't changed your mind by then — or she hasn't ripped your pointy-eared head off — I guess I can stand next to you while Jim jaws on about love and fidelity and other things he doesn't know anything about. Just don't go thinking you can do any of that tricking Vulcan mind stuff on me!"

Spock almost-smiled again.

"I assure you doctor, I have no wish to replicate the circumstances that led our counterparts to that moment in time," he said, rising to leave. "Thank you, Leonard."

The science officer exited without waiting for a response, leaving behind a truly speechless Leonard McCoy.

A/N: As promised, it's finished on my b-day! So, uh, that's all folks! Until the sequel, that is.

Disclaimer: I don't any of the characters, devices and very few of the concepts. And that's why I'm poor.