Title: Let It All Go
Author: anonpersona
Universe/Series: Reboot, AU
Rating: PG13
Relationship Status: slowbuilding leading to slash
Accumulated Word Count: 30,556
Genre: Drama, H/C, Romance, Friendship
Tropes: academy, character study, friendship, teen, troubled_past, chess
Warnings: None as of yet, besides WIP
Additional Pairings: Background Sulu/Chekov, vague Spock/Uhura fail, Sarek/Amanda, and as of this chapter, Spock/T'Pring
Summary: Prompted on kink meme "I'd love to see an AU where Kirk is homeless, and Spock takes him in. it can be set in San Fran or wherever anon wants, i just need a Kirk who's wet and cold getting taken in for the night and being given warm, dry clothes and some food."Then more plot happens. Title from the song 'Cotton' by The Mountain Goats. Any goodness contained thanks to my glorious beta, notboldly from livejournal.

Spock is a senior at the United Federation of Planets School on Earth. And despite being lightyears away from home, he is attemtpting to follow Vulcan doctorine. To remain distant and objective in every situation. To treat his own life and the world around him as a study, and to not interfere with the lives of others.

This becomes more difficult after he meets a captivating homeless boy named Jim.

"Hey! Kid! Hey!"

Spock groggily pulled himself from bed and opened the door. "How may I assist you this morning?" he asked, voice cool. It was Sunday. Sunday was the day he made up for occasionally not sleeping at all during the week. Jim knew that, and he'd only been here about a little over two weeks. Jim was sitting quietly, reading a book by the light of the window.

"Not you. Jim! You looking for a job?"

Jim's jaw dropped. "Yes. Always." He said immediately.

"You good with kids?"

"I'll take it." Jim said almost at the same time, and then frowned suspiciously. "Some kids." And then, the confident, schmoozing grin snapped back into place and he said "Mostkids."

"Perfect. And you know sign, right? Or do you just know the sign from Children of a Lesser God? I saw you translating on Friday."

"Yeah, I know it." Jim said cockily, nodding vigorously before his face turned sheepish and, with seeming reluctacereluctance, added, "I… I know some. Some sign."

McCoy, who had by this point invited himself inside, said "You only know how to cuss, don't you?"

"Hey! I can say 'I love you' and 'Squirrel sex!' And 'man-woman-gay-shark!'"

McCoy let out a huff, his eyes wide with an expression that said he was perhaps regretting this just a little. "Fine. Good enough, I guess. Just… learn a bit more before Thursday, or else you won't be able to, you know, talk to her. Though that might be for the better. At the very least learn 'Potty' or something, and you can watch Joanna."

"I'm a babysitter?"

"To a god damn awesome kid, you little shit, so you better appreciate it. Meet me at three on the dot Thursday noon, and…"

"I'm a babysitter! No, I'm so cool with this, kids love me, this'll be great!" he said gleefully. "I will be a god damn fucking awesome babysitter."

"Don't cuss in front of her. And learn sign."

"Right."

Spock watched intently as Jim scrolled down the padd at a leisurely pace, chewing his food at the same time and seeming not at all in a rush to assist Spock in studying for a test he had in less than 24 hours.

"So what happened after that?"

"It was revealed that the fossils were, in fact, a hoax. SETI was largely discredited, and government funding decreased steadily until the organization became privately owned in – "

"I said no dates. You use years as anchors or some shit, I swear. Little chapters in your head labeled things like '1927, sub category, phoenix rover.' Tell me the story!That'll prove you really know it."

"That year has no relation to the Phoenix Rover. I may also add that my memory retains verbal information with the same ease that it retains numerical information. It is a well-known fact that the Vulcan race claims an eidetic memory, and this claim is generallytrue."

"You know, Spock, you seem like a perfect little Vulcan lad, but you're kind of a smart-mouthed rebel. Anyone can tell if they listen to your words. 'Spect most people go numb and let them wash over their heads, though. Shame. Their loss."

Spock faltered, unsure of how to respond to this mish mash of compliment and insult. He instead chose to focus on the sure detail – the fact that it was none of Jim's business. "I do not see how your opinions on my loyalties have any relevance to my upcoming examination, your studies, or our current tangent of conversation." He said coolly. Jim responded with the same vaguely amused, slight smile as he did with most everything.

It was very slightly maddening. Or it would be, if Spock were an emotional creature. Since he was not, it was… curious. Distractingly curious.

"It has eveeeeerything to do with everything!" Jim sang. He opened his second cookie from its neat plastic wrapper, taking a large, unhurried bite. Crumbs fell onto the splayed padds covering the café table before them. The sight made something warm sink through Spock's chest, like a passing flame.

"This is awesome." Jim said, smiling.

"What is 'awesome?'" Spock asked.

"It's a synonym for fantabulous, used by those who are in possession of balls." Jim said, and then laughed at the look Spock shot him. "The cookie."

"I am pleased it is more than adequate." Spock said.

"No! I mean, it is, but I mean that it's awesome that I have it. That I got it in a nice plastic wrap, and soon as I get paid for my first day working, I'm going to pay you back for it. And everything. Spock, I'm going to give you money. For services.Wow. Sorry about that, I didn't mean for that to have the implications it did."

"I do not understand that reference." Spock snapped, "And there is no need for you to give me anything. My family is exceedingly wealthy."

"Spock. Let me pay you back for the cookies."

"They cost little to nothing, and are paid for through my student account."

"Spock, if you don't let me buy these fucking cookies, I will cry. Well, maybe not that far. But I will explode."

Spock let out an exhale that was perhaps slightly louder than his ordinary exhales, and Jim laughed. "I suppose it is a relief to not have to struggle for food." Spock commented, and then looked up quickly as some part of his brain registered that this was, perhaps, an offensive thing to say. Jim didn't seem to realize it, though. Instead, he responded in a slow, philosophical tone.

"Getting food's actually the easy part. People throw stuff away all the time, and San Francisco's incinerator-free, according to some hippie act, so there's always plenty of cheeseburgers with one bite taken out of them or leftover French fries or apples that have tiny brown spots that are easily picked away."

"That is not logical." Spock said sharply.

"Yeah, I know, right? People throw food away if they breathe on it funny - "

"This is not what I was referring to," Spock snapped, "You are, even now, suffering from and extended period of starvation. Previous to… our meeting… you seemed to be suffering from starvation, as well."

The silence is suddenly permeable between them. Jim's gaze falls and seems to shatter to the table and their food between them in a sudden motion, like dropping marbles and watching them clatter away. Spock is hyperaware of the bones and sinewy muscle of Jim's neck, the memory of a body devouring itself to survive still there, despite the days of having Jim consume as much food as he can.

"There just wasn't anything good." Jim says, and then lets out a huff as he rubs a hand over his face, successfully mussing his hair and eyebrows. They both know it's a rather terrible lie.

Jim, seemingly for lack of something better to do, picks a cranberry out of Spock's scone without asking, and he pops it into his mouth, swallowing it dry.

Spock waits. And then, finally, Jim speaks, and his voice it is tired and worn thin. "I was just… tired. I was tired of it. After you – I mean, I guess I got used to seeing people regularly. I haven't had anyone to know for a while, now, and even before, they weren't really, like, good people. No. No, I shouldn't say that. They were good. Mostly good. Most of them were good. But it wasn't – we didn't do things for each other just because. Everything had an ulterior motive. And not having… I just got tired. I guess it can't be simpler or more complicated than that. I was tired."

"You were purposefully starving yourself because of exhaustion?" Spock said, his own voice too quiet.

"I was – well, I mean, no. It's a different kind of exhaustion. I just spent all this time not really knowing anybody, and I'd already kind of decided I was done with this shit, and then you were there, and I was like 'I was wrong I was wrong, ok, fantastic' and then you weren't and it was just back to before, and it's not like exhaustion… I just, I can't explain it. It's… being so tired you're sick. Haven't you ever been so exhausted you can't just, like, function the way you've been doing anymore?"

Spock watched Jim's fingers digging through his scone. He thought about how Jim's hands had been, shoveling food into his mouth that first day. And how they were now, flat, slightly stubby pads of callous and thin half-moon nails, meticulously picked clean during sonic showers when McCoy helped him into his own private bathroom every night.

"Yes." He says, shocking himself. He evidently shocks Jim as well, as the berry that was previously slipped beyond his lips is suddenly visible when his jaw drops. "I understand how it could be possible," Spock adds quickly, not liking that instant assumption that he had meant to imply he had 'felt' the same way. "That one could feel the physical indicators of sleep deprivation with emotional motivators. I have, in fact, seen it before."

Jim smiled at him and quirked a brow. He did it with much less grace than any Vulcan could, but there was something honest in the way one side of his forehead tugged at the other, the scraggly brown shrubs of his brows pulled after each other upwards. "You been studying us lowlyhumans, have you?" he said.

"No." Spock said automatically, and then considered that answer. "The denial was in relation to your assumed status as 'lowly.' As for whether or not I have studied humans, the answer is 'yes.' It is, however, one of the few subjects I do not excel in. Finally, I wish to inform you that the exhausted individual your explanation reminded me of was a Vulcan."

Jim's eyes widened, and he leant forward on the table. "A Vulcan? Like, a real Vulcan?"

"Yes." Spock said, confused. There were very few fictional Vulcans, as fiction was superfluous and illogical. "A 'friend' of mine, if you will."

Jim's eyes narrowed. "Was it you?" he asked.

Spock stared. "No." he said. "A friend."

"I thought not. I just needed to make sure, though. But who was this 'friend?'"

Spock blinked. "Her name was T'Pring." He began, and then paused. "Her name isT'Pring. I did not intend to discuss her in the past tense."

"S'alright. People do it all the time. So it was a girl-friend, eh?"

"I suppose that would be an adequate title, though on Vulcan the idea was more serious. I was betrothed to her at a young age."

When Spock was seven, he was bonded to T'Pring in a rushed ceremony. His parents had, as always, been in raucous debate with one another. This time about which culture marriage should take after. His father wanted the customary arranging and betrothal for reasons that would later become obvious, after an awkward discussion and pamphlet depicting several extremely uncomfortable pictures and phrases like "biological urges" in bold print, seemingly just to make it worse.

His mother had wanted him to 'marry for love.' But, as his father had pointed out: "You yourself have stated that you wish that the boy be raised as a Vulcan. If so, to marry based on an emotion, and a quite illogical and uncontrollable one at that, seems contrite."

His mother had laughed until she cried, or, perhaps, these two events had merely come one after another. At the time, Spock had been terrified, petting his mother's arm and leg and shoulder, leaning up to kiss her face where the tears made it shiny. And in the end, he had ended up on that alter with T'Pring, his mother crying again, his father standing stoically, and T'Pring's family looking almost perfect, if it weren't for the fact that they all seemed very vaguely disappointed.

T'Pring had been kind of untouchable, standing a whole head taller than him, makeup decorating her chubby child face.

Afterwards, they had both gone to a 'bond specialist,' who had explained to them that the bond would grow in their minds. That, especially at a younger age, they'd be able to sense each other completely. They'd been paired for compatibility of thought. Those exact words 'compatibility of thought,' had been used, and Spock had marveled at them. And here's the thing – he had felt T'Pring see his devotion to those details almost like his mind was a limb, a part of his body, and the feeling of someone looking at it was less like a glance and more like she had been running a single finger up his arm backwards, pressing all the fine hairs up so they stood on end.

They'd both gone home, both uncomfortable, trying not to look at the other. But the avoidance hadn't lasted. The bond specialist had been right.

It started with thoughts. Their own brains tugging them close to one another after class, during class. They didn't talk, but they stayed by each others' sides. T'Pring, one day, walked home with him, and neither questioned it. Sarek had merely glanced down and wordlessly contacted T'Pring's mother to inform her of her daughter's whereabouts, and before she left, T'Pring had caught his hand as if to tether herself.

T'Pring matured in his mind. She fermented herself there like wine. He felt her. And when he was 8, just one year later, one simple year, they stepped out into the sun and he thought "You are beautiful."

And she heard it.

He saw her eyes as they widened, catching him. He saw her hear, and saw something almost feverish in that. She stayed away from him for a week.

This. This moment is significant. Her in the sun, all the smooth skin oil sleeking darkness in hair, the sharpness of her bones beneath her soft fat and flesh and fine hairs on face. She was just a child, but she was his, somehow. He could feel it in a primal part of him that would, someday, become sexuality, but was now simple love for a part of his own body that inhabited the outside world. For the limbs that were just beginning to take on the awkward length and skinniness of a growing child. For long, dark hair and sharp brows and these eyes that seemed to contain a fiery sickness beneath the stony surface. If he focused, he could feel her heart inside him, thump thump thump, faster than his. It confused his muscles and mind as they both tried in desperation to align with it. Join it, somehow.

This is how he felt.He felt something from Vulcan customs. And this was very, very significant.

Her first instinct had been some trembling mass of hidden emotion that surprised him less than he thought it should. They were all hard to identify, except one. Fear.

And then, because she was T'Pring, and different from anybody, ever, that fear turned rather quickly into wicked curiosity.

At the age of nine, she walked up to him after school. He had pushed away the usual bullies, head held high as always, face stoic. He was stoic, stoic, stoic, and she caught his arm and said "You 'love' me." He'd simply turned back to her coolly and refused to answer.

Their eyes had met in silence. She was still a head taller than him, and her hair, already coiled above her head as it would be when she was a full grown-woman, gave her extra height. She towered over Spock, a piece of shadow smelling of skin and sand against the sky. Spock didn't care, though. He wasn't there to be tall. He simply watched her, waiting to see what she did next.

She smiled.

T'Pring didn't smile as if by accident. It was on purpose. It was not a sweet thing of young teeth and chubby cheeks. It was not something that reached her eyes. Rather, she seemed to stretch her lips like an experiment, exposing the bones less as happiness or threat and more as if she desired him to check them.

But it was, clearly, supposed to be a smile. "Close your mouth." He heard himself say. The emotions – even such fake ones – were about as crass and blatant as nudity in public.

The smile only widened. And this time, this time, it reached her eyes. "Accompany me." She said.

So he did.

There were pieces of Vulcan untamed. Spock would run there with The Sehlat, sometimes, but he had never pressed into wilderness with another Vulcan at his side. T'Pring wished to be the first, though.

"I wish for us to be in love." She said, as they walked, a single bottle of water to share for a day-long trip. Most of it would, logically, go to Spock, since he was less tolerant of the sun and heat. For whatever reason, though, today, he wished for it to go to her. It didn't make sense.

"Emotional ties are considered inappropriate." Spock retorted.

They climbed down a small valley. At the bottom, there was a tube that had drained what used to be a lake, one of the many veins beneath the surface of Vulcan which sucked the water away into reservoirs. T'Pring skidded to a stop beside it. Her hair had come slightly undone, a tangle sticking to her neck in the heat and a curl hanging over her brows. She moved with a skip in her step that would never have been acceptable in true Vulcan company.

"I am aware. This is irrelevant to what I have said, however. I wish for love, and I intend to get it. This is why I requested you as my future bond-mate."

Spock stopped. He didn't know what to say.

"You requested… me?"

"It was also beneficial to my family, of course. My father was against it. I informed my mother it was what I desired, however, and she agreed."

T'Pring bared her teeth at him again. "She does not think like others. She hates my father, you know. She does not speak of it, the same way everyone does not speak of their own secrets. He does not feel at all, unless it is for himself. I used to formulate plans to kill him, when I was young. Now I have found a better revenge. One that benefits me. I wish to feel. I wish to fall in love. And you love me. I shall then love you, and we will be 'happy.'"

Spock remained silent. T'Pring spoke the words like they were nothing more than that. As if they couldn't clatter into reality and strip a person of their dignity and life. He didn't know what to think, beyond that perhaps she was right. A strange concept that seemed quite not his own, as if her carelessness had become tangible in his own thoughts and ideas.

"Kiss me."

Spock started. He blinked up at her face, which suddenly contorted, as faces do in the holovids his mother occasionally watched. Her lips were a fat bundle of awaiting brown, and her eyes shut tight closed. He'd felt unaware, up until this point, that she could move that face at all in any real and desperate show of emotion, yet now she did it with such fluid certainty he wondered if she practiced before a mirror.

"Complete this task." She muttered from her puckered mouth.

Spock reached a hand forward. He brushed his fingers very lightly over hers and shivered. T'Pring let out an angry, amused, emotional huff of air.

"Tongue, teeth, lips – use those. I wish to never be Vulcan. I want to be human, like you, and feel something other than hate and disgust and contempt – do you understand? Our classmates claim that your humanity is a disadvantage. I desire it."

Spock stared at the ground. Wet was still there around the tube, water refusing to fully disappear. He saw it sinking through his shoes, felt it on his toes, and realized he'd been standing still for a great long while. Long enough to put down roots.He thought, because he always thought such stupid, stupid things.

Spock dropped the water bottle and turned around, starting back. He heard T'Pring before she reached him, felt her suddenly thud into his back and her teeth on his ear, and she bit down, hard. He gasped and pulled away, unhappy with an unfamiliar feeling, something deep in the pit of his stomach, something in his hands as if his blood was heating. He shoved at her, and she fell away gracefully, landing on her feet.

Her face was a wild mess of hair, eyes shining out at him like they were two sharp, heated interpretations of fever and disease. "I love you." She said, flatly, without tone or meaning.

"So… you were engaged." Jim said after a while.

Spock nodded, and then caught himself, repressing a soft tendril of anger in his stomach. "Affirmative." Spock said. And then added, "The 'was' being the pivotal word."

Jim almost smirked. Almost. There was something heavy in his eyes, though. Something serious. As if Spock had said something more then "I was betrothed to T'Pring. At a young age, I was unable to suppress the emotional link that accompanies a fresh bond. She was similarly unable to, or, perhaps, did not wish to. She attempted to, as she put it, 'be in love.' I believe the behavior of her nuclear family was less than ideal. The emotions I interpreted through the bond could be considered 'exhausting.'"

Something more than that. But he hadn't said something more than that. Jim looked at Spock as if he'd stripped himself down like T'Pring had, with her words, though. And he asked "What happened?"

The bond was a tether.

It was a reel, and he couldn't disobey it. Spock noticed, of course, that other bonded children did not behave this way. At first, yes, but then as one and two and three and even more years went by from the age of seven, the first betrothal, the young bondmates distanced themselves. They didn't even really stand next to each other at all.

In fact, they seemed more often to avoid one another. Gazes slid over their partners like oil on water, unable to find purchase on the other. While his eyes snapped into place on T'Pring, while he found himself by her side without wanting to be, and she, he could tell by the echo in his mind, found the same thing. They fell into step and place with one another. At one point he found her in his pod at school, and she turned to him, surprised, not expecting it wasn't hers.

He knew it wasn't her doing this. He knew from the lethal acidic taste in the back of his own mind that she hated him, or wanted to, anyway. She was angry. She held the word 'love' in perfect bold, and wanted him to make it real.

Their mind was a separate world he found himself sinking into. And she, similarly. He went home and felt a spinning, empty anger. At times, he would awake, wet with sweat, touching his head and expecting a tangle of hair, feeling a body that wasn't his own, feeling a presence that wasn't anything, was only a cold sharp chill of something.

T'Pring didn't feel love. Not that Spock did, but he could tell she didn't because he knew love, remembered it, of course, didn't feel it because he was a Vulcan, but remembered mother's hands on face and heart beating slow and arms around him and small indescribable faith and –

The point was.

The point was she didn't know what love was. But emotions had already elapsed onto her, because this was fear, and he didn't know how to stop it.

Spock stopped avoiding T'Pring after one night, after he felt that fear well up like cold blood, filling him and threatening to spill over. He acted differently in these times. It was, he could tell, worrying his mother. Forcing his father to show some empty, heartless form of concern.

So he'd taken to running in the desert. Claiming it was exercise, but really, really, it was nothing more than stretching that bond thin, stretching it in some desperate, broken, selfish hope that perhaps it would break. It didn't. Of course it didn't.

In fact, tonight it curled up inside him. Wove tight and held him.

He was not surprised to find her there, in the end.

She lay under the dust of other worlds shining down, stared up at it with a sick longing for the heavens that he recognized as his own. Her hair was down, was black oil slick against her back, just brushed. Skin was pale, boney limbs and face sharp and eyes great, large full things capturing the sky and shooting it back, as if each pupil and iris contained the reflective power of an ocean compressed.

She was still.

And it wasn't that he knew anything about what happened to her behind the walls of her home, but he had memories, feelings, feelings feelings feeling she couldn't push away so he couldn't either. So he knew, almost. So he knew, enough.

"I do not believe you resemble your mother in any fashion." He said. He could remember in perfect detail the woman sitting there at their betrothal, back when they were both seven and had separate minds.

"Quite an insult, quite an insult." T'Pring rambled, her voice sharp, broken, angry, scared. "My mother is emotion. She's everything Vulcans abandoned. It is my father who is the failure. The stoic, uncaring beast. My mother feels, feels and enjoys it. Wecould enjoy it, too."

A long silence. When T'Pring spoke again, her voice was horribly quiet, as if she feared being overheard.

"She's not mine." T'Pring said. Her legs curled together like other beings. She was only wearing warm-season sleep-wear, and those legs, light-green bruised, looked horribly naked curled together like that. "My biological mother died on the USS Kelvin. She was conducting a study through the Vulcan Science Academy."

Spock could see Andromeda in her eyes. Tania Borialis. Sol.

"She is the mate of my father, so she is to be called my mother. She had a child before with a Vulcan named Sevik. A daughter. Sevik illegally left Vulcan with the daughter a year before she wed my father, just when the daughter turned nine. There was an unresolved investigation as to why."

Tears piled up beneath the stars and finally overflowed. Spock looked down. Away. He didn't want to see her unveiled anymore. He wanted her to put on the same mask everyone else did and shut up, shut up and stop. He could not bring himself to leave, however. So he lowered himself down beside her, and did not protest as she turned and pressed her face into his neck, despite the heavy thud of her emotions suddenly strengtheninged tenfold, the voice of her mind less like language and more like the growing cacophony of a storm.

He only protested when her hand trailed down, tried to touch him below the stomach. Then he gripped her wrist and pushed back, touching her fingers briefly to his in soft comfort. Her emotions were like fire. They burned him up and made him blank, and let him be blank for her. Calm for her. A circle of something that might burn away or go out, he didn't know, but he couldn't leave.

T'Pring lifted her face, tears leaving trails, making mud of the sand that had blown over her pores. "I want to feel." She said, voice hard, brittle, choked with crying.

"You are feeling." Spock responded, blankly. She gripped his face, pulled him towards her, trying to crush his lips against her mouth, but he tilted his head away so their foreheads merely pressed against one another. She kept them there, as if wishing to fully entwine their minds, make their brains meld together as well.

As they were headed back, she became nervous, distanced herself. She would go back and forth between gripping his hand in a way that was truly sinful and confusing and stepping back, going away from him, tripping over her own gangly, almost-woman legs, sick eyes staring at him suspiciously. He felt the untrained fingers of her mind picking his over.

"Do not attempt it." T'Pring finally said, threateningly, as they at last approached his family's home.

He didn't respond, and certainly didn't pretend to not know what she meant. He went inside with her still standing out there, eyes cold with disease and hatred and desperation.

Spock told his mother what he knew of T'Pring's family, and she cried. He didn't know what to do, but strangely, he didn't feel much. Didn't feel anything. While he knew it wouldn't last, it seemed at this moment as if she had fully burned all potential of petty sorrow or guilt or love away. Nothing more to be suppressed.

At her bidding, he told his father, and his father nodded unfeelingly, rose, and very business-like went off to report the abuse to the proper authorities.

Spock felt when T'Pring realized what he'd done. Felt her suddenly clawing at him, at the bond, trying to strike the bond but only tearing at his and her mind. He screamed one broken yell once without meaning to, and then went silent, down on all fours, breathing heavily at the feeling of her tearing at him. They'd expected this, of course. Expected anything from a child with a broken katra. It was torture for exactly seven seconds, one for each year of his life he'd spent without her, he thought, and then the clean empty slice of a healer, and then she was gone.

Gone.

Gone.

Empty.

Echo.

Silence.

She took everything with her.

Spock hadn't realized how much of himself had only been T'Pring. How her in his arms, tearful face in his neck, had actually been a part of his body, and he was missing it now. She was the point of the function in his limbs, a vital organ in the middle that made the blood in his veins worth something. It was stupid, ridiculous, silly, to be different from not having her, as his father most logically implied. His mother held him, though, when he didn't ask to be held. For the first time in years he allowed it without protest, empty and echoing with her loss.

"This is grief." His mother said gently. She pushed back his hair, and he relished the small strike of 'I am too old for that,' the slight, guilty feel of conviction in his bones for the first time in a while. "You'll figure out how you were alone before eventually, I promise. I'm so sorry, Spock. So sorry."

"There is no need." He said. "It is not of import."

Regardless, he was allowed a visit.

She was being held in an 'Enclosed Healing Facility' until she was able to regain the control that had been stripped from her by the abuse. It was bizarre to see her without feeling her, as if this T'Pring must be a fake. She looked at him in much the same kind of way, and he marveled at the fact that he did not know what she was thinking.

"Thank-you." She said. She refused to look him in the eye. She looked strange and tiny inside the baggy black uniform they had her wearing, and her hair had been cut short, like his. "This was the logical thing to do."

"Affirmative." He responded.

"You must never worry if you're a real Vulcan." She said suddenly, in English. He blinked. "I'm more human than you ever will be."

"Affirmative." He said, staring at this creature with his hair and wild eyes and a face that seemed like something that belonged to him. He didn't know what else to say. But he knew this is what she wanted him to say, so he said it.

For the first time, she smiled a real smile, unlike any he'd ever seen on her face. It reached her eyes effortlessly, was only very small, and seemed to tear her face apart as if it had been cut open.

The healer in the room with them stepped forwards, pulling her back as T'Pring seemed to suddenly fall towards Spock. Not violently, not quickly. More like attempting to crumple into his bones. Through the cold metal table between them. As if she thought they'd fit together and that mere fact would catch her and keep her from hitting the ground.

Spock was alone. Seven more seconds. And then he left, to meet his mother in the lobby outside.

Jim was silent after Spock finished, the padds of his fingers rolling over the berry in his hand, his eyebrows together.

"Is that the end?" he asked after a long stretch of time where Spock could practically feel his words between them, a cause he didn't see the effect of, yet.

"No." Spock responded shortly. "I could continue up until the present day if you wish. Considering I am still alive, the completion of one event does not mark 'the end.'"

"I meant of the story."

"That was not a story."

"Well… it kind of was."

"No. I was informing you of events you appeared to take interest in. I apologize if you viewed it as a folk tale, intended to amuse, but I can assure you it was merely information that-"

"Ok! Ok, you know what, fine, I'm sorry, it was not a story. It was… whatever you were saying it was." Jim pressed his thumbs to his eyes and breathed in and out slowly, and Spock stared down at the table between them.

"Do you feel 'anger' towards me, at this moment?" Spock asked, curious.

"No." Jim said.

"You are lying." Spock informed him conversationally. It was then that he began to gather his things. He wrapped the trash leftover from the meal into a neat, compact ball of brown paper around the soggy remains of food. He twisted the plastics together from wrappers, separated metals and papers and glass from the bottle into three distinct categories. He tried to ignore Jim's eyes on his hands.

"I'm not 'angry.' It's not the right word, ok? Admittedly you frustrate the hell out of me. But I'm… confused. Overwhelmed, I suppose. I don't know."

"I apologize for 'overwhelming' you." Spock said stiffly.

"Don't. I wanted to hear that."

"So you said before. This is why I told you it."

Jim sighed loudly, and before Spock could reach them, he grabbed all his own trash and swept it onto his lap, wheeling the chair around to the trash bin behind them and shoving it all inside. There wasn't even a crumb clinging to the wrappers. "Yeah, that's certainly true." He said in a sing-song voice. Spock approached the bins, plastics and glass in hand, when Jim suddenly reached up and caught his arm at the elbow. "Listen," he said, "I'm glad you told me. I just… people don't usually spill their guts like that. People usually spit out small details about feelings and try to wave them in front of people's faces until the other person has no choice but to shove em all together. It's just… strange. You say things like there's never a reason not to say them. You don't fuck around with things. You always end up doing the opposite of the norm. The norm of, like, everything. Ever."

Spock stared at the hand on his arm, and Jim let go. "So now I am 'strange?'" Spock said.

"Don't pretend to be offended. You know you've just been complimented. And you liked it." Jim said bluntly, and smirked at him.

Spock made no comment.

"I suppose we should clean up and get back, though." Jim said, directly before the automated voice came over the loudspeaker, saying that the library would be closing in approximately fifteen minutes.

Spock selected the four most useful volumes to continue his studies. Jim selected one with large, detailed pictures and videos, the fingers loud and bright and clean, fluttering like butterflies on the cover. Spock didn't look for longer than a moment.

The sun had sunk low in the time they'd spent in the library cafe, and it had now reached that perfect point of shimmering gold splayed across all green things, the sky in the east only beginning to accept night while the west was lit on fire with a bleeding, melting sun. Jim let out a noise as they exited, something less like the oohs and ahhs Spock had heard others exclaim at beauty, and more as if this sky was something complex and miraculous that had only just been invented, and the world was made better for it. They began their walk back to the dorm, and Spock ignored for as long as he could to increasingly slower pace Jim was setting.

Jim had refused an electric wheelchair, saying "I can move my own arms perfectly well, thanks."

His breath was coming in short bursts by the time they were two thirds back to the dorm, though. And when Spock thought back to the way he had verbally exploded because of a few unintending words and how his face contorted with a kind of bare, shameful pain whenever McCoy had to help him to the shower or bathroom and whenever Spock had to get him his meals, Spock hesitated for a moment.

Only a moment.

Then Spock put his hands down to the chair, gripping the upward curve of metal shaped to a human hand and pushing them onwards. Jim, thankfully, did nothing besides glance grudgingly and gratefully up at him.

Spock watched the road, and he watched Jim's breathing even out. If he concentrated, he could feel the thump thump thump of Jim's heart, reverberating against bones and muscle and the plastic-metal solidity of the chair connecting Jim's to Spock's.

AN: I swear this has a purpose. You'll just have to keep reading to find out. -D

Anyway. I tried to make a super-long and hopefully good and stuff to make up for the long pause between the last two chapters. Love you guys! And remember, hitting that review button saves... um... sehlats. Yes. Little baby Sehlats get homes every time you hit that review button. Mwahahaha!